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Es war der Tag, an dem ich zurückkam von der hoch amüsanten Verleihung des EMMA - JournalistInnen - Preises. Den 1. Preis hatte Kerstin Kullmann gewonnen für einen Text, der im Januar dieses Jahres im Spiegel erschienen war. Es ging darin um die unterschiedlichen Strategien von Spitzenpolitikerinnen im Umgang mit der Macht. Die Autorin hatte auch eine Expertin befragt, die Frauen in der Politik zur Doppelstrategie riet: nach außen weich, also „weiblich“; nach innen im Bedarfsfall hart, also „männlich“. Und genau so halten es nicht nur in Berlin die Spitzenpolitikerinnen, müssen sie es halten. Doch sie tun das in einer Welt, die ebenfalls eine Doppelstrategie fährt: die Frauen und Männer mit zweierlei Maß misst. Das erleben wir gerade mal wieder in der wahrhaft karikaturalen Reaktionen auf Merkels Rausschmiss von Röttgen. Weiterlesen

For the 13th #HERvotesblog carnival, we’re celebrating National Women’s Health Week.  The federal government launched National Women’s Health Week ten years ago in an effort to improve women’s health by building awareness about things like exercise, healthy eating and the importance of regular check-ups.

It’s nice to have our government speaking out about the importance of our health, but we know that it takes more than just awareness to insure that all women are healthy. It takes access to high quality affordable health care services. For too many women, health care hasn’t been affordable, especially reproductive health services. That’s starting to change, thanks to the new health law.  This week’s #HERvotes blog carnival will focus on the importance of the preventive well-woman services of the Affordable Care Act.

You may already know that the Affordable Care Act requires new health plans to cover contraceptive counseling and methods without any co-payments.  But did you know that plans will also be required to cover breast feeding supplies? And screening for domestic violence?  These are just a few of the new preventive services that will be covered for women starting later this year.

The #HERvotes blog carnival will feature stories about how real women and their families are already benefiting from the new women’s health services and information on new parts of the Affordable Care Act that will be implemented in August 2012.

You can participate by telling your own story and by sharing the posts below on Facebook, Twitter (using the hashtag #HERvotes) and other social media.

Part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.

Read More:

Who’s Afraid of the Ob/Gyn? Lack of Communication Between Women and their Doctors- Dani Nispel, Program and Policy Intern, National Council of Women’s Organizations

National Women’s Health Week: Pledging to Take Care of Ourselves- Ann Rose Greenberg, Marketing Coordinator, Jewish Women International

Celebrating Women’s Health Week as a Grandmother- Nancy K. Kaufman, CEO, National Council of Jewish Women

Get your women’s health checkup today. It’s covered!- Lois Uttley, Co-Founder, Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need

League Recognizes National Women’s Health Week- Stephanie, League of Women Voters

#HERvotes, a multi-organization campaign launched in August 2011, advocates women using our voices and votes to stop the attacks on the major advances of the women’s movement, many of which are at risk in the next election.

In February, the Department of Defense announced it would loosen its restrictions on women in military combat roles, allowing them to “co-locate” closer to the front lines with ground combat troops. It would also open up 14,000 new job opportunities for women soldiers.

That new policy took effect this past Monday. But DoD still hasn’t take the next step: allowing women in combat.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) would like the department to change that policy once and for all, and has drawn up the Gender Equality in Combat Act  to “require a report on implementation of a terminination of the ground combat exclusion policy for female members of the Armed Forces.” Under the act, the secretary of defense would be required to deliver a report in one year on how he would implement ending the old policy.

As Ms. magazine pointed out in its Fall 2011 story by Molly M. Ginty, “All Guts, No Glory,” women already are in combat roles, even if they’re not recognized as such. Hundreds of women soldiers have been injured and died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, yet the pretense remains that they’re not operating machine guns or finding themselves in the midst of firefights. Without such recognition of their actual service, it’s harder for them to gain certain promotions or receive proper treatment for battle stress.

According to the Huffington Post, Gillibrand is hoping to incorporate the bill into a larger defense appropriation that the Armed Services Committee will begin work on next week; failing that, she’ll offer it as stand-alone legislation or an amendment.

Photo of Marine recruits at basic training by Flickr user expertinfantry  under license from Creative Commons 2.0

Er gehörte zwar nicht zur Jury, aber dennoch konnte Kulturstaatsminister Neumann (Foto rechts) die Qualität des 1. Preises besonders gut beurteilen. Denn er gehört zum Bundeskabinett. Und Spiegel-Redakteurin Kerstin Kullmann (Foto Mitte) hatte über die sehr unterschiedlichen Machtrituale der Ministerinnen geschrieben. „Als Angehöriger dieser Runde muss ich sagen: Sehr gut beobachtet!“ schmunzelte der Minister. Überhaupt schien Bernd Neumann Vergnügen an der Verleihung dieses 12. EMMA-JournalistInnen-Preises am 15. Mai zu haben, die diesmal in Berlin in den eleganten Räumen des Institut Français am Kurfürstendamm stattfand. Nach seiner Eröffnungsrede verließ Neumann nicht etwa, wie bei vielbeschäftigten Ministern üblich, die Veranstaltung, sondern blieb wie alle rund 150 Gäste zwei Stunden sitzen, bis zum – außerordentlich übermütigen – Schluss. Aber dazu später mehr. Weiterlesen

Der Eindruck, dass Europas berühmtestes Filmfestival einer dringenden Generalüberholung bedarf, begleitet die Verleihung der Goldenen Palme Jahr für Jahr. Das gilt vor allem für das Frauenbild an der Côte d’Azur. Bisher hat eine einzige Frau den Preis bekommen: Die Neuseeländerin Jane Campion für "Das Piano". Das war 1993. Im Jahr 2012 befinden wir uns nun also in der Stunde Null: Null ist die Anzahl der Filme von Regisseurinnen, die in diesem Jahr für den Filmpreis nominiert sind. Die 22 Wettbewerbsbeiträge stammen ausschließlich von Männern. Dagegen regte sich jetzt Protest: "Frauen zeigen in Cannes ihr Gesicht, Männer ihre Filme" lautet der Titel des Debattenbeitrags, den die Schauspielerinnen und Filmemacherinnen Coline Serreau, Virginie Despentes (Foto) und Fanny Cottencon in der französischen Tageszeitung Le Monde veröffentlicht haben. Weiterlesen

While Hollywood’s marginalization of women may not yet have reached the scale of the Republican Party’s, a study released today reveals that the top-grossing films of 2011 were far from gender-equitable. The study, “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011,” conducted by San Diego State University‘s Martha M. Lauzen, reveals that women accounted for only 33 percent of characters. Given that women are 50.8 percent of the population, this in itself is problematic. More worrisome, though, is how that 33 percent are represented.

They’re not leading the action: Women made up only 11 percent of film protagonists. This statistic rings true when you consider 2011’s box-office champions: Number 1 was the boy-vs-man Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2; number 2 was the girls-on-the-side Transformers: Dark of the Moon; and number 3 was the MMF-love-triangle The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. While each of these films has one female lead character, Bella is arguably the only true protagonist among them, and she, sadly, falls into the other traps for women characters identified by the study: “Female characters remain younger than their male counterparts” (Bella is 17 to Edward’s 107) and “Female characters are most likely to be in out-of-workforce positions such as homemaker or student” (Bella goes from the latter to the former).

To be fair, Hermione could be considered part of a leading trio, but Harry is the real center of the saga–look no further than the titles. That being said, at least Hermione is the same age as her male counterparts, is not defined via marital status (as 59 percent of all female characters are) and is portrayed as a leader (unlike a whopping 86 percent of female characters). However, Twilight aside, age differentials are less common in films featuring teens and marital status is rarely a defining trait for pre-adult characters. And, though Hermione is a leader, she is not the same type of recognized leader that male characters most often are, in fields such as government, religion and business.

The number 5 film of 2011, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, does give us a woman pirate as a leader, and does so with refreshingly little focus on romance. Alas, other films in the top 100 include the typical array of female stereotypes: women as domestic or mom-figures (The Help (#13), War Horse (#41)), women as hyper-feminine creatures who love shopping, frilly clothes and boys (Smurfette in The Smurfs (#19), Mary in The Muppets (#34)), women as hypersexualized creatures who tolerate or “ask for” male sexual violence (Water for Elephants (#57), Footloose (#67), Red Riding Hood (#80)), women as either absent or alien (War Horse, Cowboys & Aliens (#30)). Then, of course, there is Sucker Punch (#89), the “girl power” brand of faux-feminism that suggests all sorts of dubious paths towards “empowerment.”

A number of the top 100 films also have either no lead women characters or have the typical token semi-strong woman amongst a gaggle of male characters, as in The Hangover Part II (#4), Cars 2 (#8), X-Men: 1st Class (17), Super 8 (#21), Rango (#22), Cowboys & Aliens (#30) and Happy Feet Two (#54). Overall, the majority of the top 20 films are male action/adventure stories that keep women on the sidelines. But the gender problem isn’t just one of genre: Most of the films on the top 100 list represent women in one of a few typical ways–as partners or “booty” for men, as mothers, or as damsels in distress. Whether the film is animated, an action-adventure or a comedic romp, women are either peripheral or virtually non-existent. Few of the 100 would pass the Bechdel test.

Thankfully, there are some exceptions. The much-lauded Bridesmaids (#14) proved what we feminists have known for a long time–women are funny. And Hugo (#49), though led by a male protagonist, gave us the savvy wordsmith Isabelle, while Soul Surfer (#72) supplied us with a rarity indeed: a lead woman athlete. The Iron Lady (#100) granted us a rare portrait of a woman head of state while Hanna (#75) presented an iron girl capable of holding her own against a mass of baddies. That brings me to possibly the strongest woman lead of the year–Lisbeth Salander of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (#28). While not a problem-free feminist heroine, she is about as far from a damsel in distress as you can get. A code-cracking computer genius who refuses to abide by gender, sexuality and beauty norms, Lisbeth rejects playing the victim–in fact, she is stronger and more intelligent than the men that surround her.

Alas, characters of Hermione’s and Lisbeth’s ilk are still all too uncommon in film, a problem that works to normalize the sidelining of women in real life. Let’s hope that 2012 brings us more truly feminist heroines, leaders, and role models–both on screen and off.

Es ist ja eigentlich keine Überraschung: Die rot-grüne Koalition in NRW wurde von mehr Frauen als Männern an die komfortable Macht gewählt. Denn Wählerinnen haben traditionell ein Faible für die Sozialdemokraten und die Grünen. Das Frauen-Duo Kraft/Löhrmann hat nun ganz besonders viele Frauen für sich mobilisiert, und zwar vor allem die aus ihrer eigenen Altersgruppe. 44 Prozent der Wählerinnen ab 45 - also fast jede zweite! - machten ihr Kreuzchen bei der 50jährigen Ministerpräsidentin, die insgesamt 39 Prozent der Stimmen geholt hatte. Zusammen mit den 14 Prozent Wählerinnen Ü 45 für ihre 55-jährige grüne Stellvertreterin ist Rot-Grün in dieser Altersgruppe also dicht an der Zwei-Drittel-Mehrheit. Aber auch in allen anderen weiblichen Altersgruppen haben Kraft und Löhrmann eine satte absolute Mehrheit. Und die Männer? Sie wählten wie üblich etwas stärker die Liberalen (Männer:9%, Frauen:8%). Aber sie wählten zum ersten Mal nicht wie bisher häufiger die CDU. Der größte Gender Gap ist diesmal bei den Piraten zu verzeichnen: Sie wurden von zehn Prozent aller Männer gewählt, aber nur von sechs Prozent der Frauen. In der Altersgruppe 18-29 Jahre stimmte gar jeder fünfte Mann für die Internet-Partei, doch nur jede zehnte Frau. Was bei einer Partei, in deren Führung die Frauen quasi abwesend sind, auch keine große Überraschung ist. Mehr zum Thema

Feminist novelist Julia Alvarez (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies), known for her clear, unaffected prose and her keen sense of justice, applies her powers of observation inward in a new memoir, A Wedding in Haiti. In her most intimate book to date, Alvarez delves into her own closest relationships–with her aging parents, her husband and a young Haitian man named Piti. Most of all, though, Alvarez takes us deep into her relationship with Haiti, a land that speaks to her while testing her bonds with others, her confidence in herself and her faith in humanity.

In 2001, Alvarez and her husband, Bill Eichner, meet Piti, a teenager who has crossed the border from Haiti into the wealthier Dominican Republic in search of work–a common trek for young Haitians seeking to earn money for their families. Alvarez and Eichner hire Piti to work on the Dominican coffee farm they’ve just purchased, and watch him rise in the farm’s ranks and become a very successful young man. On one of their many visits to the Dominican Republic, Alvarez promises Piti that she will be at his wedding, if and when he gets married. In 2009, he calls her to cash in on that promise.

Meanwhile, Alvarez’s aging parents are starting to forget key moments of their past, and the loss of their lucidity weighs heavily on her. They have moved back to the Dominican Republic, rendering her relationships with them, her coffee farm and Piti intricately entwined. On one of her visits there, Alvarez forges her way into Haiti’s remote, rural areas to attend Piti’s wedding and falls in love with the country across the border.

A year later, Haiti is devastated by the massive earthquake. Piti, his new wife, and their baby have settled in the Dominican Republic, but with a persistent sense of unease. For every survival they celebrate, they mourn another loss. Alvarez and her husband decide to return to help Piti and his wife by taking them back across the border to see their families, as well as to witness the destruction and reconstruction of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

A Wedding in Haiti is simultaneously heartbreaking and humorous, simple and elusive. Alvarez uses her command of language to convey how language will never be enough to build relationships, nor to rebuild a country. Her stunning conclusion–that we should follow our fears and journey into the darkness to experience the most beautiful things in life–will resonate even with readers who only know Haiti through the lens of foreign media. For Alvarez, Haiti is “the sister I hardly knew,” someone related yet far away. After reading A Wedding in Haiti, you will feel the same way.

Die Zeit der Alphamänner in der Politik scheint in unseren Breitengraden besiegelt zu sein. Der überragende Sieg von Hannelore Kraft ist vor allem ein Sieg des Prinzips Frau, bzw. des Prinzips Mensch. Es ist weniger die Politik der Kandidatin, sondern ihr Stil, der die Menschen ihr Kreuz bei der SPD machen ließ. Bescheidenheit, Solidarität, Sachorientiertheit. Also der Effekt, der die Menschen nach dem XL-Alphatrauma mit Schröder/Fischer zu Merkel trieb. Die Knappheit von Merkels Sieg im Jahr 2005 war ja nicht den WählerInnen aus anderen Lagern zu schulden, sondern Männern aus ihrem eigenen Lager: Es waren laut Wahlanalyse die alten Konservativen, die die eigene Kandidatin nicht gewählt haben. Jetzt also Hannelore Kraft. Sollte Merkel es 2013 noch einmal schaffen, wäre es von nun an wahrscheinlich, dass der 1. Kanzlerin Deutschlands im Jahr 2017 auf den Fuß die 2. Kanzlerin folgt, diesmal eine sozialdemokratische. Weiterlesen

We called ourselves the Dead Mothers Support Group or DMSG for short. If there was a touch of the macabre in the name, that was okay with us. Losing our moms as kids had been devastating. Why sugarcoat it? We were Harvard grad students who came together inside a dingy lecture hall to swap stories and cry. When it was my turn, I talked about who my mother had been–a painter with a sharp eye for beauty.

As a semi-tomboy, I sat cross-legged at her feet before school, watching her go through her makeup routine. It was an exhaustive process that began with an eye stick, incorporated a scary eyelash curling device and ended with tiny silver tweezers. She was particularly careful with her brows, always following their natural line, tweezing only what was necessary. Sometimes she noticed me and our eyes met. It was as if we were from foreign countries, me in my sloppy pony tail, she with every hair in place.

I lost my painter mother when I was 16. She had had a mastectomy six years before and the cancer had gone into remission. But several years later it resurfaced. By the time I was in high school, she was battling exhaustive treatments and endless medications. Too sick to paint by then, her makeup routine became her only creative outlet.

Sharing stories with the women of the DMSG was cathartic. This was just before Hope Edelman’s landmark book Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss opened the discussion, so the opportunity to talk to other women who understood was rare and profound. In addition to loss, we spent a lot of time talking about how to mother ourselves. While some women had managed to power through their grief, at 26 I still felt stuck in mine. My primary goal back then, via yoga, therapy and daily journaling, was to manage my sadness. Every day I asked my journal the same question: When will I be through with these tears?

The answer seemed to be “Never.”

No matter how hard I worked, the tears kept coming. Whenever they arrived, I retreated to an empty room at my office or holed up in my apartment. As I let the tears roll through me, I hated the heavy, cumbersome feelings of loss. I wanted to be someone else, the kind of person who could stuff it all down and make it disappear. I was angry at grief for taking so long to complete itself. “Screw emotional health,” I told my therapist. I didn’t want that; I wanted sweet, serene denial. I longed to be the kind of person who had small, tidy feelings–so small I could lose track of them altogether.

When the pain finally began to lessen in my early 30s, I was tentatively overjoyed. I thought maybe it was a result of acupuncture, lying for a half hour with carefully placed needles in my skin. Or maybe it was the blue-green algae–nature’s superfood, with a complete list of amino acids that promised to alter the body’s chemistry on a cellular level. That’s what I wanted: to obliterate each grieving cell and replace it with a fully recovered one. Ideally one that had never experienced sadness in the first place.

Who knows what was helping, but eventually my mornings spent crying diminished. I found a steady job, formed a strong circle of friends and bought a house. When I was 33 I met my partner, a woman I had fallen for in college but had been too consumed with grief to pursue  as a lover. I moved to California and settled into her house on the side of a hill, beneath leaning Monterey pines. The exquisite feeling of being in love bloomed inside me. It was a fierce and powerful thing, and slowly, year by year, my grief became smaller and smaller.

Ten years later, when I was 44, I thought maybe, just maybe, I had gotten past it. As the annual anniversary of my mother’s death approached, a time when I normally felt a heightened sense of sadness, I felt lighter. But this wasn’t just any anniversary: I was now the age my mother had been when she died, an age I wasn’t convinced I’d reach. I was now poised to outlive her. To soothe myself, I made an appointment for a massage. At the last minute, unaccountably, I added an eyebrow waxing. I had never altered my eyebrows before or, for that matter, even taken a good look at them. And when I did, what I saw were two unkempt and overgrown strips.

When I arrived for my brow waxing, I got cold feet. I warned the aesthetician that I had never done this before. “Please don’t change much,” I begged, explaining that I liked my eyebrows thick. While she smoothed on a warm solution of wax and then a second later yanked it off, I imagined pruned little trails, the kind that looked great above many women’s eyes but that I couldn’t imagine above mine.

When she was done, she handed me the mirror. I took a breath and peered at my reflection. My brows were still there, thick and dark, but something was different. That’s when it hit me: In just twenty minutes, the wax had unearthed the arc of my mother’s brow. That was her line, her slight curve.

I touched the pink, stinging skin. It wasn’t until I lay on the massage table several minutes later that the tears began to fall. The massage therapist said nothing as I sniffed and asked for a tissue.

Photo of the author and her mother

 

 

S Dňom matiek máme drobné ideologické problémy. Na rozdiel od MDŽ, ktoré vo feministických kruhoch prechádza znovuzvýznamňovaním, sa pri tomto sviatku zatiaľ nie je veľmi o čo opierať. Kraľujú pri ňom adorácie materstva, noviny, ktoré sú hladné po témach, si na ňom stavajú články typu „Aký kvet pre akú mamu“, a najviac sa na ňom priživujú obchodné reťazce. S MDŽ má však spoločné to, že i pri jeho príležitosti politici radi vyjadrujú neadresnú – a hlavne sociálnou realitou nepodloženú - vďaku ženám. Pofidérny závan povinnej heterosexuality, ktorý sa so sviatkom spája, snáď ani netreba rozvádzať. Cítiť k matke lásku a vďačnosť za veľa vecí je síce pomerne normálne, ale je prijateľné myslieť si aj to, že nie všetky mamy sú také, že si zaslúžia úctu a poďakovanie? Prečo ich nevyjadrovať skôr podpornými mechanizmami v rodinnej a sociálnej politike? A vôbec, kto je to vlastne mama? Môže ňou byť aj osoba, ktorá dieťa neporodila? Je žena, ktorá dieťa porodí, nevyhnutne „matkou“, alebo sa ňou stane až vtedy, ak vstúpi s dieťaťom do špecifického vzťahu? Komu všetkému môže Deň matiek patriť? Zatiaľ celkom presne neviem, ako tento deň chápať, ale bolo by milé, keby bol nekonzumný a aktivistický. Aké možnosti vôbec máme?

Za „založenie“ Dňa matiek vďačíme viacerým ženám. Napríklad sufražetke – poetke a abolicionistke – Julii Ward Howe. Howe v roku 1870 napísala dokument Mother’s Day Proclamation, v ktorom reagovala na americkú občiansku vojnu a vyzývala ženy, aby sa zomkli a protestmi pomohli zastaviť vojnové hrôzy. Keďže ženy sú vo vojnových konfliktoch najzraniteľnejšou skupinou, niektoré feministické iniciatívy zdôrazňujú toto pacifistické posolstvo a pri príležitosti Dňa matiek organizujú rôzne akcie na podporu žien vo vojnových oblastiach. Hoci sa Deň matiek do legislatívy USA a iných krajín adaptoval až niekoľko desaťročí po aktivitách Howe, aj to v rôznych dňoch a skoro všade sa rýchlo skomercionalizoval, mohol by byť – podobne ako V-day 14. februára – príležitosťou na komunitné aktivity, čítania, petície, stretnutia či rôzne zbierky.

V Československu sa Deň matiek začal oslavovať v roku 1923, aj vďaka Alici Masarykovej, ktorá ho presadila na pamiatku svojej mamy Charlotte Garrigue Masarykovej. No a na deň matiek by sme si mohli uctiť  nielen naše „reálne“ mamy, ale napríklad aj všetky tie „matky“ – učiteľky, spisovateľky, vedkyne – ktoré nás ovplyvnili a boli pre nás inšpiráciou. V dejinách máme toľko žien, ktoré by si za svoju prácu zaslúžili viac skutočného ocenenia…

Fotografia Ladislava Rollera (Deň matiek v Bratislave. Defilé s kočiarikmi. pozri. vyššie) z roku 1939 zachytáva propagandistické využívanie sviatku v období prvého slovenského štátu. V tento deň sa po viacero rokov organizovali pochody, ktorá mali v časoch neistoty demonštrovať prosperitu a vyspelú sociálnu starostlivosť štátu. Typické je, že na fotografiách sú iba ženy a dievčatá – „budúce nádejné matky“. Po roku 1948 sa oslavy Dňa matiek u nás utlmili a viac-menej ich nahradil Medzinárodný deň žien. Dnes ho systematickejšie propagujú materské centrá, ktoré v rôznych mestách organizujú Míľu pre mamu. O jednej z takýchto akcií minulý rok písala Miša. Vo svojom článku upozorňuje na viacero problémov, ktoré sa s takto organizovanou oslavou spájajú a tiež navrhuje niekoľko možností, ako by tento deň mohol vyzerať:

„To, čo nemáme a v čom vidím potenciál materských a rodinných centier, je kreatívna konfrontácia, presvedčenie o tom, že aj ako matky máme svoju hodnotu pre túto spoločnosť, a preto máme nárok „uzurpovať si“ verejný priestor. Viem si predstaviť možno skromnejšie podujatie, čo sa veľkých hviezd a darčekov týka, no o to bohatšie na prezentácie a workshopy na témy založenia a organizácie centier, legislatívy, otvorené diskusie na témy súvisiace s materstvom, starostlivosťou o deti a postavenie matky v spoločnosti. Viem si rovnako predstaviť pracovné skupiny mám a otcov, ktorí sa na mieste stretnú a pokúsia sa (spolu s deťmi) vymyslieť, ako vtipnou formou upozorniť na problémy, s ktorými sa v meste stretávajú. Viem si predstaviť rodinné súťaže, súťaže dcér a mám a pod. Rovnako si viem predstaviť diskusiu s predstaviteľmi samosprávy. Nakoniec, deň matiek nie je len o usmievavých, ochotných a pracovitých maminách, ale aj o tých nahnevaných, rozhodných a bojovných, ktoré vedia prečo… Ja osobne nepotrebujem byť zabávaná, nepotrebujem ruže ani reklamné darčeky. Potrebujem zažívať uznanie za to, čo robím každý deň, pretože to nie je samozrejmosťou. Potrebujem vidieť akceptáciu toho, že starostlivosť o druhého človeka je rovnako cenená ako iné profesie, ktoré si vyžadujú zodpovedný prístup, trpezlivosť, manažérske schopnosti, tímovú prácu, pedagogické schopnosti, logické myslenie, fyzickú silu, vyrovnanosť, empatiu a všeobecný rozhľad. Nepotrebujem byť rozptýlená a „hýčkaná“ módnou prehliadkou či zamatovým hlasom nejakého údajne známeho speváka. Potrebujem bojovnejší Deň Matiek.“

Komercionalizácia sviatku, ale aj to, že jeho oslavy (nielen na ulici s kočíkmi a v 30-tych rokoch) môžu evokovať  redukovanie žien na matky, nositeľky biologickej reprodukcie, sú najväčším „trójskym koňom“ Dňa matiek. No čo keby sme ho využili na diskutovanie o rôznych fenoménoch spätých s rodičovstvom? Mohli by sme hovoriť o tom, ako chápeme rodičovstvo a materstvo, pripomenúť si  lesbické materstvo, diskutovať o tom, či aj gejovia sú „matkami“ („…ak matka je osoba, ktorá signifikantnú časť svojho aktívneho života venuje starostlivosti o deti a preberá zodpovednosť za ich ochranu, rozvoj a sociálnu akceptovanosť, tak takouto osobou môže byť nielen žena, ale aj muž. Hoci matkami sú najčastejšie ženy, materskú prax môžu vykonávať oba rody.“ Pozri texty o rodičovstve tu.)

V Argentíne (ale isto nielen tam) sa na Deň matiek muži výnimočne postarajú o poriadok, varenie a nákupy, a ich mama alebo manželka si môžu konečne „dopriať“ deň voľna. Cieľom Dňa matiek by nemali byť takéto paradoxné aktivity, ani v podobe politických holdov matkám, ani v podobe komerčných aktivít v nákupných centrách. Deň matiek potrebuje redefinovať rovnako, ako sa to deje s MDŽ. Až potom bude naozajstnou oslavou.

 

 

 

 

 

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The flowers come out and the prices go up. Balloons, cards, jewelry—gifts for every price point are hawked from every storefront. Even the slick, gender-neutral Apple stores are festooned with maternal slogans come May: “Get the world’s best mom the gift to match.”

But what if you don’t have the world’s best mom? What if you have a mom who couldn’t mother? Or no mom at all? Mother’s Day, and its attendant guilt-inducing advertising, used to twist me into rages. Beneath the fury was grief: I had left my mother’s house when I was 14 and never seen her again. But I couldn’t touch those feelings for a long time, so I focused on the corporate hijacking of these intimate, and often complicated, relationships.

Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day about 100 years ago, was pretty mad, too. She invented the holiday in honor of her mother, who had created “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” to improve sanitary conditions and provide medical care and untainted milk for mothers and babies in several towns in West Virginia. In 1908, Anna inaugurated the second Sunday in May, with the intention of making it a national holiday. She drafted a statement of purpose for Mother’s Day, and the first three lines still give me pause. Mother’s Day, Jarvis said, was:

To revive the dormant filial love and gratitude we owe to those who gave us birth.  To be a home tie for the absent.  To obliterate family estrangement.

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1914, and Anna Jarvis spent most of the rest of her life and money fighting the commercialization of the day she had built. She organized boycotts, crashed a confectioner’s convention, attacked Eleanor Roosevelt for using Mother’s Day to raise charity money, threatened lawsuits and was arrested for disturbing the peace. She died penniless in a Philadelphia sanitarium.

I never got arrested for my aversion to the day; my hostility just became, as usual, a long boring battle with my own brain. But this year I did something different. I published a short book about my mother, Mother, Stranger. I wrote her into existence.

Three years ago my mother died, and suddenly I could see her again. Meaning I could write about her. Meaning I could find her through the tangled knot of memory—long blocked by pain and guilt. I could begin to understand her madness, the illness that had driven me to leave her house. As I wrote, I found others like me.

There are so many motherless daughters, or daughters with monsters or ghosts or simply broken bits as stand-ins for moms. For us, Mother’s Day is a reminder of the malfunction and the loss. And still. I think of Anna Jarvis and the way she wanted Mother’s Day to be about individual expression rather than store-bought gifts, about the way she wanted “to obliterate family estrangement,” which was endemic even then. And I’ve found that the answer to advertising’s “Best Mom In the World!” parade of imagery is a comeback with my own true story. This too, is a kind of home tie for the absent.

Photo of sculpture by Gustav Vigeland in Oslo by Flickr user Forest Runner under license from Creative Commons 2.0

 

 

 

 

 

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. This Sunday, tradition dictates that we will celebrate our moms by showering them with flowers or brunches or candy and finding a way to say “I love you.” For many, this may feel sufficient, but for more and more people, it’s not enough.

I, for one, have always struggled to celebrate my mom on this day. The greeting card aisles overwhelm me, and I can never seem to find a card that resonates with me or my family. As I’ve grown older, I find that my friends, my peers and my-coworkers have felt a similar anxiety. We’re not being depicted in the mainstream media and it makes it difficult to celebrate our moms in the ways that we want.

I love my mom more than words could say, and I often think about the choices and sacrifices she must have made to raise me, her only child. When my parents left their home in India for San Francisco in the ’70s, my father was eager to make the move–my mother, not so much. She left her sister and her parents back home. Sometimes, when she talks about them, I hear something in her voice–a tone of mourning even after all these years. What it must have taken for her to build a new life and raise a child in a place that didn’t yet feel like home, I’ll never know.

Over the years, I’ve collected stories of motherhood and stored them away in my heart to recall when I consider parenthood: stories of women raising their children by themselves, of women who were not yet ready to become caregivers, of women who found each other and of the ways their love and their family have been made invisible by society. These are stories of struggle, but also of strength. I see that strength reflected in these women’s children. It’s pretty powerful. Yet every year I fail to find the right images and the right words to support these moms.

At Strong Families, we recognize a huge cultural gap between those who are recognized in mainstream Mother’s Day celebrations and the mamas in this country. Shanelle Matthews put this nicely over at the Strong Families blog:

Moms are so varied but we still see only one kind of mother portrayed each year. The commercialization of motherhood not so subliminally shames moms on the periphery by not acknowledging their existence on the one day devoted to celebrating moms.

So we decided to do something about it. We launched a “Mama’s Day Our Way” campaign, featuring beautiful e-cards that capture the varied aspects of mamahood–immigration, separation, disability and queerness–and the love, joy and appreciation we feel for our mamas. There are even cards to appreciate the people who helped birth and care for our children.

While Mother’s Day has different roots in different parts of the world, in North America it began in 1870, when Julia Ward Howe called for a day to celebrate peace and motherhood in response to the casualties of the Civil War. Her words are particularly relevant today:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies…”

We’re in the throes of the War on Women, battling with government agencies for our right to make decisions about our bodies, to have the resources and support we need to uplift our families and to thrive in our communities, without a constant threat to our freedom. How can we properly honor our mamas who combat poverty, whose partnerships are denied, who are separated from their children, who are dehumanized in prisons? How do we uplift single mamas and queer mamas and young mamas, and tell them that we support them and stand with them?

On Mother’s Day as on all days, the personal is political. We hope you’ll browse our cards, customize a message and send them to the mamas in your life. You can read testimonies of strength and courage in parenting on our Strong Families blog. And you can take action to ensure that all mamas have the support they need to be strong and the rights they need to be properly recognized.

Card image by Verónica Bayetti Flores of the National Institute for Latina Reproductive Health (NILRH).

Sites such as RH Reality Check and Abortion Gang have long comprised a thriving reproductive-rights blogosphere. In the past year, their numbers have swelled, as legions of pissed-off feminists take to the Internet to oppose the growing war on women’s reproductive rights.

One of the new kids on the repro-rights block is Keep your Boehner out of my Uterus, which started in early 2011 as an anonymous Tumblr in response to increasing anti-choice legislation and quickly amassed a following of thousands. After being interviewed for an article for Salon.com, Jessica Luther, the woman behind this fierce and furious Tumblr, has made her identity known and is ready to talk openly about her salvo against the War on Women and what she has learned along the way.

Ms. Blog: Why did you start Keep your Boehner out of my Uterus?

Jessica Luther: I started KYBOOMU back in February 2011 a couple of days after attending my first reproductive rights rally, The Walk for Choice. While there, my friend snapped a pic of someone holding a sign with those words. We laughed about how clever it was. And then over the next couple of days, both with friends here in Austin and in the community on [feminist blog] Shakesville, I joked about making a meme with Boehner and him saying all the things that anti-choicers actually believe.

I got incredibly encouragement from Shakesville commenters and so, having heard a bit about Tumblr, began my Boehner memes.

I thought it would simply stay memes and would fizzle out. But then the Pence Amendment came quickly to the fore, and here in Texas they were passing the forced ultrasound law, and I found myself starting to blog more generally about reproductive rights. And I haven’t gone back.

What has been the reception of the Tumblr so far?

Good, overall. The memes were really popular. The picture of Boehner inside the uterus (which two of my good friends made for me) has been reblogged thousands of times. My follower count continues to increase.

While I have received my fair share anti-choice hate mail (I allow people to send me anonymous messages), the largest area of contention on my blog has been the language I use to talk about the people involved in the reproductive rights movement. Tumblr is an interesting space in which to blog and I wasn’t quite prepared for it. When you blog something, it is very easy for someone else to reblog it. Things can move very quickly. I learned fast that the language I was using to discuss the battle over reproductive rights was not inclusive for people other than cis women. People would reblog things I wrote with commentary saying I was transphobic, that I was erasing trans* people from the reality of the reproductive rights struggle, that I just didn’t care. And I will admit–have admitted multiple times on KYBOOMU–that until I got onto Tumblr, I had never even considered how the language of the movement works to create insider/outsider groups, even if the laws and culture we are fighting have an impact on more than just cis women.

Over time, my language has evolved. Most of the time it is just me writing a note at the end of a blog post (either reblogging someone else’s commentary or linking to a post on another website) that reads “NB: More people than just cis women are affected by these laws.” Something simple.

I have had MAJOR arguments with other pro-choice advocates over my desire to be inclusive. I used to lose 20 followers whenever I would fight for inclusivity. That doesn’t really happen anymore. I have had many trans* people thank me for the inclusivity, though I don’t feel that I should be thanked. It should just be how we talk about reproductive rights. I have had other people tell me that they themselves try to be more inclusive now (including John Darnielle, lead singer of The Mountain Goats, who follows KYBOOMU on Twitter and actually reads the things I write).

What’s your take on how both mainstream media and feminist media tackle issues such as reproductive rights?

I think one of the things we can do and are doing and need to keep doing is simply inform people of the many different anti-choice laws that are getting proposed (some passed, some not) in the different states. One of the hardest things about reproductive rights is that it is often, especially now, fought at the state level. And even in your own state, it can be hard to keep track.

The media can serve to remind people–over and over again if necessary–of how many laws there are, the many different shapes they take, the beliefs of their sponsors, etc. It can help people to engage them on the local level, which is SORELY needed right now. Yes, national politics matter, but when it comes to reproductive rights the true battles are playing out in our backyards, and most people don’t know about their local battles until it is too late.

Further Reading:

• Team Uterati, founded in 2012 by Imani Gandy (Angry Black Lady), aims to provide comprehensive up-to-date information about anti-choice, anti-women’s health and anti-reproductive rights legislative measures in various states. Gandy started Team Uterati as a “community-based organizing tool for feminists fighting for equal rights and reproductive justice.” The project, which is the first of its kind on the Internet, also contains a continually growing Wiki with resources, articles, databases and a forum.
• Abortion Gang: Abortion Gang’s website says it best: “We are unapologetic activists for reproductive justice.” The site discusses reproductive health and justice, and reminds us again and again that the personal truly is political.
• Bebinn: A collection of pro-choice information, rants and unrelated gifs, “for all your pro-choice needs!”
• Care2: An array of comprehensive coverage under the heading “Dispatches from the War on Women.”
• Huffington Post – Laura Bassett: HuffPo’s politics writer tackles both state and national reproductive rights news in a concise, easy-to-understand fashion.
• Prolonged Eye Contact: With articles and commentary on abortion and reproductive rights, this site, according to Jessica Luther, “is REALLY phenomenal at being inclusive in how they talk about repro rights.”
• Rabble: “Radically pro-choice” site that offers the tagline, “It’s pro-choice or NO choice.”
• Radical Doula: Almost defying categorization, Radical Doula is site run by activist Miriam Zoila Pérez, and connects the dots between reproductive rights, birth activism, doula work, LGBT issues, immigrant rights and racial justice.
• Reproductive Rights Prof Blog: This website keeps tabs on reproductive rights issues from legal and academic perspectives.
• RH Reality Check: The one-stop shop for breaking news and opinion on sexual and reproductive health and rights, with updates throughout the day.
• Shakesville: At Melissa McEwan’s one-stop shop for progressive and feminist news, bloggers Misty Clifton and Shark Fu have done a great job of keeping the Shakesville community informed and aware of various reproductive rights news.

This list is only a sampling of the many fabulous folks who write about reproductive rights online. Please feel free to add your own in the comments!

Photo illustration by Cory Tobin, courtesy of the Keep your Boehner out of my Uterus Tumblr.

On Mother’s Day, we honor the women in our lives for all they do–meal planning, financial planning and family planning, to name a few. Regrettably, the latter task is going to cost mothers even more, as coverage for reliable birth control and related services comes under increasing challenge in the U.S.

Last week, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a bill banning any state funding from going to Planned Parenthood, the state’s largest provider of basic gynecological care and family planning services, serving more than 70,000 patients a year. Arizona is not alone. Last year 43 states attempted to reduce funding to Medicaid, the major public-funding source for family planning services, and nearly all governors envision additional cuts this year.

Birth control and motherhood may appear to be competing goals. But studies show that the typical American family today wants two children and, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, women typically must use reliable contraception for three decades to achieve this goal. Consequently, over 99 percent of women age 18-44 who have been sexually active have used contraception at least once. Today, among the 43 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89 percent are using contraception. Aside from condoms, women bear most of the out-of-pocket costs for contraception.

Some individuals hold strong personal beliefs about the use of birth control and should not be required to use it.  But the costs of contraception–or of discouraging its use–need to be well understood.

The National Bureau of Economic Research recently reported that the pill is responsible for the narrowing of the gender wage gap by 10 percent in the 1980s and by 30 percent in the 1990s.  Moreover, reliable birth control contributed to economic development by reducing women’s risk of dropping out of school associated with early childbearing and high fertility rates, contributing in turn to increases in women’s labor force participation, the continuity of their careers, and the standard of living of women, children and families.

Recent studies by the Guttmacher Institute and Brookings Institution demonstrate that every public dollar invested in contraception saves roughly $4 in Medicaid expenditures–or $5.1 billion in 2008–not to mention the broader health, social and economic benefits. A 2010 California study found that every dollar spent on a Medicaid family planning program saved the public sector more than $9 over the next five years by averting costs on public health and welfare that would have otherwise been incurred. In the private sector, over two decades of research has shown that the availability and use of highly reliable birth control reduce employee absences and turnover, particularly among women who would otherwise face unintended pregnancies. Indeed, it costs insurers and employers more not to provide contraceptive coverage.

And yet, for the first time in two generations, contraception is becoming harder to obtain. State and federal policies that reduce access to family planning services and contraception mean that individual women bear the cost for birth control–an additional $500 or more a year in the case of women with no insurance.

Such policies will allow insurers to profit directly from the considerable savings associated with these women’s use of birth control. Employers, states, and the general population will become “free riders,” enjoying the broader social and economic benefits while individual women shoulder the costs. What’s more, the public costs are only likely to rise as more women have less access to reliable contraception and are put at increased risk of remaining or becoming members of low-income households.

Should women bear the financial costs of contraception? Alternatively, might the costs and benefits be equitably distributed?

Consider for a moment what access to reliable birth control has done for you and your family. What are the costs you and society as a whole would bear from constraining access to birth control versus the benefits of eliminating cost sharing so that all women who want to do so can obtain highly reliable birth control?

Given that women bear the physical burdens of pregnancy and child birth, we would do well to honor mothers–and all women–by establishing policies that share the costs of birth control among the beneficiaries. Not only would it be equitable, it would be cost-effective.

Chloe E. Bird, a senior sociologist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation, is co-author of Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Image from Flickr user cambodiaforkidsorg via Creative Commons 3.0.

As we approach Mother’s Day (May 13), we’re inundated with celebrations of motherhood, but some kinds of mothers are not invited to the party. Hallmark cards and flower commercials rarely show queer mothers, trans mothers, stepmothers, disabled mothers or young mothers. Making matters worse, a good number of these groups are not only ignored, but actively demonized–even by feminists.

Among these reviled mamas, young mothers figure prominently. During May, the month in which most mothers are honored, young moms have their very existence challenged: May is also Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month.

Though teen pregnancy prevention efforts are varied nationwide, many deal in shame and stigma. A notorious 2001 print ad campaign by The National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy labeled young women of color “rejected,” “dirty” and “cheap.” But we don’t have to go that far into the past to find campaigns that stigmatize young parents. 2007 ads from the United Way are based on the idea that young mothers are so “disturbing” that young people shouldn’t be caught dead in their position.

This anti-teen-pregnancy programming often has very little to do with the real and material barriers young women face, particularly the young Latina and immigrant women whom the campaigns target because they have higher birth rates than white teenagers. Latinas are disproportionately poor, which means they are less likely to be able to afford health insurance and the birth control they need to prevent unwanted pregnancy. If they want to terminate their pregnancy, they are less likely to be able to afford the full cost of an abortion–an issue most teen pregnancy prevention organizations will not touch. They are less likely to be able to afford the cost of higher education, and many immigrants are not eligible for federal financial aid at all–rendering the point of delaying pregnancy to finish school moot. In short, there are larger systematic issues at work, and reproductive health advocates need to remove the barriers preventing young women from making informed choices about what’s best for them. Then, we need to support those choices, not dictate what they should be.

Now, to be clear: many of the initiatives supported by teen-pregnancy-prevention advocates are quite helpful. Comprehensive sexuality education and access to affordable birth control methods, for instance, are crucial for young people, and many teen pregnancy prevention programs often do work towards these goals. But a key problem with teen pregnancy prevention approaches is that the impetus for supporting these otherwise valuable programs is based on the decision by a group of powerful people that young women must not be mothers. The decision of a powerful group (adults) to work to limit the reproduction of a less powerful group (youth) can in no way be construed as falling into line with reproductive justice principles of supporting women in deciding when and whether to have children, and to parent the children they do have with dignity.

It’s true that many young mothers do not plan their pregnancies and may not have wished to become pregnant. This is indeed a problem. But to address it, the reproductive health and justice community must take a look at larger systems that deny young women of color, low-income young women and immigrant young women the information and material resources to prevent pregnancy.

We need to support sex education and access to birth control as part of a platform that gives all women–young women included–a real choice about whether and when to start their families. We need to support young women who become pregnant and choose to terminate their pregnancies by eliminating the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion and means that many Medicaid-eligible young women are unable to get their procedure covered. We need to have the hard conversations around child sexual abuse and dating/intimate partner violence that are completely ignored in mainstream conversations about teen pregnancy. We need to fix the educational systems that shut out these young women, denying them opportunities for which they might decide to delay starting families. And finally, we need to support young women who choose to parent by providing them with the resources they need to parent with dignity. Being a young mom does not have to be devastating, and young parents should have as much opportunity to succeed as young women who choose to delay pregnancy or never give birth at all.

Treating young mothers as the problem is not only morally lacking, but also misses the mark. Instead, we must target inequity. Let’s be done with the shaming and the stigma–any less is not reproductive justice.

This post is part of the Strong Families Mama’s Day campaign, in collaboration with the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights. Mama’s Day cards available here!

Verónica Bayetti Flores is the Policy Research Specialist at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and lives in Austin, TX.

Top right: Print ad by the National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Below right: United Way Teen Pregnancy Prevention Ad. Left: National Institute for Latina Reproductive Health graphic (NLIRH). All rights reserved.

In time for Mothers Day, the 12th HERvotes blog carnival is dedicated to getting the word out about economic security for women, especially in their retirement years.  Women need better benefits — not cuts — under social safety net programs.

The economic slump in both the U.S. and Europe has prompted elites to call for “austerity.”  But we know that’s just a code word for cutting social programs women rely on disproportionately.  It turns out, though, that politicians who champion “austerity” will pay a price at the polls.  Just look at Europe: Last week, French voters ousted Nicolas Sarkozy and Greek voters threw the government into crisis — mainly in reaction to harsh cuts in social programs and (in France) an increase in the official retirement age.  Voters get it: austerity leads to a stagnant economy.

Here in the U.S., austerity imposed by state and local governments has thrown hundreds of thousands of government employees out of work, the majority of whom are women.  Want to know why the unemployment rate, while declining, hasn’t gone below 8 percent yet?  It’s mostly because of spending cuts imposed by conservative state officials like Texas Governor Rick Perry, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Florida Governor Rick Scott, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and others.

Despite elites’ call for across-the-board federal budget cuts and reductions in Social Security benefits, women’s organizations are calling for improvements in those benefits — specifically, child care credits for those who drop out of the work force to care for children or ill or disabled family members; an improved minimum benefit for lifetime low-wage and part-time workers, who are disproportionately women; fairer rules for disabled widows and surviving spouses, benefit equality for working widows; and equal benefits for same-sex spouses and partners, among other improvements.

In a report to be released today (Friday, May 11), the National Organization for Women Foundation, with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare call for these improvements to be made. In “Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling: A Proposal to Modernize Women’s Benefits” (PDF) we call for updating the program to face the new demographic reality: many women are now both bread-winners and primary care-givers and our guaranteed social insurance system should recognize that fact.

Join us by sharing the posts below on Facebook, Twitter (using the hashtag #HERvotes), and other social media.

Part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.

Read More:

My Time, Intellect, Skills and Labor are Worth Less than Those of My Male Peers? Really? Yes, Really.- Anny Bolgiano, Intern, Coalition of Labor Union Women

The Gifts Mothers Really Want- Ellen Bravo, Director, Family Values @ Work

Thank You, Mom, for Teaching Me to Be Safe and Secure- Malore Dusenbery, Special Populations Associate, WOW

Can’t Afford to Work?- Shawn McMahon, Manager of Research and Innovation, WOW

Making a Vital Lifeline More Secure for Women- National Organization for Women

#HERvotes, a multi-organization campaign launched in August 2011, advocates women using our voices and votes to stop the attacks on the major advances of the women’s movement, many of which are at risk in the next election.

Das ist nicht nur sehens-, sondern auch hörenswert: Maren Kroymann, Pegah Ferydoni und Walter Kreye leihen am kommenden Dienstag den PreisträgerInnen des diesjährigen JournalistInnen-Preises ihre Stimme. Die drei SchauspielerInnen werden im Berliner Institut Français die prämierten Texte lesen. Die Preisträgerinnen: Kerstin Kullmann/Spiegel (1. Preis), Sibylle Hamann/Falter (2. Preis), Kerstin Greiner/SZ Magazin (2. Preis) und Julia Niemann/taz (3. Preis). Einen Sonderpreis erhält die Lokalredaktion des Lauterbacher Anzeiger. Der Sonderpreis Männer geht an: Dieter Bartetzko/FAZ, Sören Kittel/Berliner Morgenpost und Armin Lehmann/Der Tagesspiegel. Vier Mitglieder der diesjährigen Jury – Ines Pohl, Jeanne Rubner, Marietta Slomka und Alice Schwarzer – halten die Laudatien (Foto). Die Preisverleihung im Institut Français (Kurfürstendamm 211) wird um 18 Uhr von dem Staatsminister für Kultur, Bernd Neumann, eröffnet. Die Veranstaltung ist öffentlich, der Eintritt ist frei. Mehr über die PreisträgerInnen und die Jury.

From the Ms. Editors: Despite doubts about the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education,  U.S. tax dollars are still funding it. Conservatives earmarked $250 million for such programs under the Affordable Care Act, and last month, the Obama administration controversially green-lit the Heritage Keepers abstinence-only curriculum to receive funds reserved for evidence-based sex education. The excerpt below, from Katherine Stewart’s recent book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, takes a detailed look at the problems posed by abstinence-only education.

Abstinence education posits the idea that the proper way to educate adolescents about sex is to instruct them to refrain from sexual activity until marriage. The way to avoid contracting an STD or an unwanted pregnancy, a typical program tells its students, is follow a few simple rules: “Respect yourself. Choose friends who are positive influences. Go out as a group. Get plenty of rest.” Doug Herman, a popular abstinence-until-marriage speaker at public high schools across the United States, sums up the message this way: “If the sun doesn’t touch it, nobody else’s son ought to be touchin’ it either!”

The typical abstinence program, however, is not against sex per se. Abstinence instructors often make a point of telling teenagers that they know how hard it is to refrain from sexual activity. Sex is wonderful, it is incredible, it is mind-blowing—if you are married. The principal goal of most such programs, in fact, is to imbue children with a certain view about the proper relationship between sex and marriage. Sex within marriage is a source of fulfillment and even ecstasy; sex in all other contexts is degrading and shameful.

Abstinence educators frequently promote this view by representing all sex that occurs outside the marital bed as harmful. Premarital sex is dangerous and dirty, they say—a gateway to decadence, depression, broken lives, and an early grave, especially for women. If you have sex outside of marriage, says Pam Stenzel, a nationally recognized “abstinence proponent” who delivers talks to public school students around the country, “then you will pay.”

Not having premarital sex, on the other hand, is always posited as beneficial. GamePlan, an abstinence course developed by A&M Partners (formerly Project Reality) and taught in public schools around the country, offers as evidence the instructive tale of Steve, who resisted his girlfriend Tina’s sexual overtures. Tina, the little tramp, was already pregnant when she asked Steve to have sex with her, and faced a dead-end future as a single teenaged mother. Steve, however, met his future wife, the virginal Karen, six years later at college.

Steve and Karen have now been married for over seventeen years and have four children. Steve is a teacher, and Karen enjoys caring for the children. Steve and Karen never have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy. Sex is a normal, natural, and exciting part of their lives together.

Of course, Steve wouldn’t have considered using protection when he had sex with Karen or Tina—A&M Partners opposes the idea that discussion about condoms and other methods of contraception belongs in sex education programs.

Many abstinence education programs make cheerful use of gender stereotypes. The Just Say Yes curriculum, used by twelve public school districts including Dallas’s exclusive Highland Park Independent School District, tells teens that abstinence means “you make a conscious decision to avoid turning others on,” and continues to explain that “if a guy is breathing, then he’s probably turned on.” The text continues by advising girls “to think long and hard about the way you dress and the way you come on to guys.” A woman who “shows a lot of skin” is either “ignorant when it comes to guys,” is cruelly “teasing” men, or is “giving her boyfriend an open invitation” to have sex with her. The responsibility for policing the boundaries of sexual behavior, evidently, rests on women alone; men, according to the Just Say Yes way of thinking, can hardly be expected to control themselves.

Abstinence-until-marriage sex education courses are taught by a wide variety of outfits. Some operate on a large scale, serving multiple communities in dozens of states. Others work with a single school district. In almost all cases, however, the sponsoring organizations are religious in nature or have thrown themselves into the business of sex education for transparently religious purposes.

Youth for Christ, which receives federal funds to teach abstinence education in public schools all over the country, makes no effort to disguise its agenda. “YFC goes where kids are,” says a 2010 press release from the West Michigan branch of Youth For Christ. “With programs like Campus Life (reaching public high school and middle school campuses) … YFC carries the Love of Jesus Christ to all different kinds of kids in many different situations.”

Some abstinence education programs do allow for discussion of the role of contraception and safe sex practices in preventing unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. In many cases, however, these “abstinence-plus” programs, as they are known, spread disinformation rather than information about sex. According to a report by the Texas Freedom Network, factual errors are taught in the health programs of 41 percent of Texas public school districts. The most common errors concern condoms and their efficacy, such as the notion that the HIV virus can pass through latex. In a theatrical exercise from the Brady Independent School District in Brady, Texas, students are told that condoms have a 30 percent failure rate in “preventing most STDs” and that “HPV and Syphilis are so small that they can slip through condoms.” One character in the theatrical production says, “Giving a condom to a teen is just like saying, ‘Well if you insist on killing yourself by jumping off a bridge, at least wear these elbow pads—they may protect you some?’”

Misinformation about other STDs is also pervasive. Programs such as the Austin LifeGuard Character and Sexuality Education, used in ten school districts, teaches that there is “virtually no evidence” that condoms reduce the risk of the HPV (human papillomavirus) infection and alleges that “about a third” of all in vitro fertilizations can be linked to infertility caused by STD infections —in spite of evidence to the contrary from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. At least one Texas curriculum, Wonderful Days, taught the dangerously false notion that “natural fertility regulation”— the rhythm method —has the “highest user effectiveness rate.” In an attempt to help students understand fertility, Wonderful Days offered an outlandish little rhyme: “If a woman is dry, the sperm will die. If a woman is wet, a baby she may get!”

Abstinence education may not have stopped young people from having nonmarital sex or diminished the rates of unwanted pregnancies or STDs, but it has benefited at least one constituency: evangelical religious organizations.

Take Action: To demand that the U.S. government stop funding abstinence-only programs, sign here.

Excerpted with permission from Katherine Stewart’s The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children. All rights reserved.

Photo from Flickr user ewedistrict via Creative Commons 3.0.

Zum 40. Geburtstag der Frauenbewegung in Deutschland veranstaltet die „Evangelische Akademie Bad Boll“ vom 11. bis 13. Mai eine dreitägige Tagung. Es referieren u.a. Familienrechtlerin Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit, Soziologin Jutta Allmendinger und Gewerkschafterin Leni Breymaier. Alice Schwarzer eröffnet am 11. Mai, 16.30 Uhr die Tagung und liest am Samstag 12. Mai, 20 Uhr aus ihrem „Lebenslauf“. – Ein ganzes Dossier über 40 Jahre Frauenbewegung – genauer gesagt: über zehn Jahre Frauenbewegung und ihre Folgen – hat EMMA in ihrer Winter-Ausgabe veröffentlicht. Darin geht es von den ersten spontanen Frauenaktionen, Frauenzentren und Frauenprojekten bis hin zur gesellschaftlichen Umsetzung: zur Reform diskriminierender Gesetze und Übernahme feministischer Initiativen durch Institutionen, von den Frauenhäusern bis zum Girls Day oder der Väterzeit. Weiterlesen