Sophie Jones has an interesting commentary on SlutWalk, criticism thereof, and the ensuing “feminist debate about the politics of linguistic subversion” at The F-Word.

She starts by tackling those feminists who criticized SlutWalk as a misguided attempt to promote the “right to be called ‘slut.’” Jones writes: “Some women argue that SlutWalk is just an expression of what Nina Power has called Feminism™, in which gender equality is rebranded as the right to buy whatever you want on the way to your burlesque class, whether it’s a diamond-encrusted vibrator or a pair of effing shoes.” I, like many SlutWalk supporters, have been frustrated by this misunderstanding of how and why the term is being used. That said, I’m also in complete feminist support of burlesque classes, vibrators, and “fuck-me shoes.” There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be sexual or sexy — it’s a woman’s right and still not an invitation to rape.

Jones sums this issue up as “a clear case of these writers simply misinterpreting the mission of Slut Walk, which is not a protest ‘for the right to be called ‘slut’ but a protest for the right to dress however you want free of the presumption you are ‘asking for it’.” Then we move on to more interesting questions: even if the point of SlutWalk isn’t about reclaiming the word “slut” — can we? and should we?

The first thing that sprang to my mind was the reclamation of the word “queer” by the LGBT rights movement. I identify as queer and am in strong support of the term “queer rights” as an inclusive term for the movement that avoids the alphabet soup and artificial divisions between communities. Of course, the reclamation of the term “queer” has also been beset by controversy, and not everybody has embraced the term. But it has made significant inroads with strong supporters — could “slut” go the same way?

Certainly, the term has a lot of baggage and negative connotations. But “queer,” as a former hate term, came with a lot of baggage itself (not all of which has been shed yet for many people).

A reclamation of the word “slut” would be a step for sexual liberation, for recognizing that the negative connotations of the term rely on the policing of women’s bodies and sexuality. Essentially, slut is used for a woman who is judged to have sex “too much” with “too many different people” — but if we accept that a woman has the right to have as much sex as she wants with as many partners as she wants (consensually and safe, of course), then the term can mean something along the lines of “sexually liberated” or “enjoys having a healthy sex life.”

I believe that reclaiming and rejecting the term “slut” can both be valid feminist stances. It remains to be seen which way will win out — I hope the debate on this will proceed on respectful lines and with a real attempt at understanding. Yet those with a visceral reaction against SlutWalk, especially to the point of strongly misunderstanding how the term is actually being used in this case, might examine how they think about language and whether “slut” really needs to be utterly banished from feminist vocabulary. I’ll definitely be thinking about this language dilemma myself.

One of my friends recently asked if I was going to be updating here again. Since it’s been, you know, three months of silence. Oops.

I will not, in fact, be updating here anytime in the near future. Don’t be sad though! The reason is that I’m blogging on Women’s Rights and Immigrant Rights over at Change.org. In fact, I’m blogging over there way more than I ever did here — five charming, insightful posts from me a day! (j/k — they’re primary dull and superficial)

So, while Fractals isn’t exactly multiplying at the moment, I’d absolutely love it if anybody who’s listening would follow my posts, and those of my amazing co-bloggers, over at Change.org!

Love,

Alex

Climate change isn’t my regular “beat,” but you have to be pretty out-of-touch (or George W. Bush) not to realize what a massive problem global warming is. Hence, I wasn’t surprised that the winning cause for Blog Action Day was Climate Change–a recent college grad, environmentalism is the hottest topic amongst student activists across the country.

I think Blog Action Day is an amazing, well orchestrated event (and it just happens to be run this year by my new employer, Change.org). What was it that those anonymous White House aides said about supporters of LGBT rights? Something about “internet left fringe” and “need[ing] to take off their pajamas”? And here we are, at it again, wearing our monkey-print pajamas and failing to realize “governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.”

Know what else is difficult? Governing a country when rising sea levels start submerging parts of that country. (I’m in New York City! We’re going to be among the first to go!)

Okay, that’s an oversimplification of the problem of climate change. It’s much more COMPLICATED and DIFFICULT–and Mother Nature doesn’t wait just because Obama has a tough gig.

Our country has tons of problems–like I said, global warming isn’t my regular beat, and I’m a layperson in the issue. My pajama-clad energy usually goes to LGBT rights, feminism, freaking out about the Religious Right, etc. I’m more than aware of the other issues to pay attention to. But that’s not a valid excuse.

Today, we put our keyboards to use for climate change. Tomorrow, who knows?

“Dead line [sic] for your national response: October 15, 2009.”

And make no mistake about what it is they’re threatening: in a final note to “patriots,” the video says to “Be prepared for when the fateful day of the declaration of war [emphasis added] is nationally announced.”

So, ultimatum and threat of war + people bringing guns to Obama’s speech + the kind of rhetoric directed toward John F. Kennedy before his assassination (except now we can also vote on whether the president should live via Facebook poll) = are you worried yet?

FDR told us, “We have nothing to fear except fear itself.” And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of–people’s fear. The fear of “the other.” People’s fear for their “way of life.” The 9/12 protests: Fear of government. Images that depict Obama as Hitler: Fear.

Fear incited by right-wing pundits and politicians who really should know better. Fear translated into hate.

When people’s fears have been brought to a pitch–conspiracies, demonizing, scapegoating–the danger of violence arises. That’s why Latino organizations took a stand against Lou Dobbs’ fear-mongering rhetoric: to protect themselves. That’s what makes the growth of militia and white supremacist groups across the country so alarming.

Perhaps even more important (and difficult) than health care reform–although that’s a big one–progressives need to figure out how to undermine the power of fear in shaping our current national discourse. It all ties together anyway: With “kill your grandma” rhetoric Democrats are kept from pursing their policy goals.

Under the Bush years, we were conditioned to be afraid with the color alert system (it’s orange today! ORANGE!) and constant Dick Cheney rhetoric about our national security (and then some distractions about how it’s really gay marriage that will destroy America). It’s easier to cause an atmosphere of fear than to dispel it: hence the desperate Republican Party’s continued attraction to these cheap tricks. But Democrats can’t stoop to those same tactics–the 9/11 truth movement show that liberals are capable of whipping up fear and conspiracy theories too.

National security goal #1 should be to work toward civil discourse, against fear–bringing a new meaning to the “war on terror.”

In honor of this Banned Books Week, why not read one of 2008′s most challenged books, listed on the American Library Association’s website. I personally recommend #2 on the list, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, one of childhood favorites that has stood the test of time, as a recent re-reading proved (undertaken in time for the release of a movie based on the first book in the series, The Golden Compass). Pullman’s work attracted the ire of would-be censors for “political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence” (translation: it’s too progressive and makes organized religion look bad). You’ll also find the Gossip Girl series on that list, and though I’ve yet to read the books, I’m a devotee of the T.V. version. (Oh, Chuck and Blair, together at last, but for how long?)

Or, go for one of the “Banned and Challenged Classics.” Forty-two of the Radcliff Publishing Course’s top 100 literary all-stars have been subjected to ban attempts, so there’s plenty to choose from. I’m currently engrossed in #11, Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita.

If you can’t decide which to read, here’s my suggestion: George Orwell’s classic dystopia, 1984. One of my all-time favorite books, and great for BBW because the book has not only been censored, it’s about censorship. Anyone who hasn’t read it yet should take this opportunity to celebrate the holiday and find out the true meaning behind “Big Brother” and the thought police.

I moved to New Jersey for high school, so I missed out on a continuing New York City sex education. But I always assumed–well, it’s New York City!  Where would you expect to find better sex education?

So imagine my surprise when I read a letter, “Sex Ed in the City,” to the New York Times a few days ago from the president of Planned Parenthood of New York City. Joan Malin points out in that the city actually does not require sex education, a fact I find shocking. With the current budget cuts being made in New York schools, as a program legally considered non-essential, sex education is often a target. This puts youth at danger by not educating them on making healthy sexual decisions–and those young people grow up to adults who still don’t know how to make the best decisions.

I’ve realized, considering my own New York education, that the best sex ed I received was in 7th and 8th grade, when I attend a school that, though not private, was affiliated with Hunter College, not the Board of Education, and it had chosen to prioritize the subject where the city administration had not. While some public schools now also do an admirable job of providing comprehensive sex ed, it shouldn’t be left up to the discretion of individual school administrators.

If you’re a New Yorker and want to see sex ed secure, sign up with the Planned Parenthood “We’re Going to the Principal’s Office” campaign.

That’s right: these little latex wonders are the newest old green technology. “Fewer Emitters, Less Emissions, Less Cost,” a report from the London School of Economics, checks out what would happen to our carbon footprint if all the “unmet need” for contraceptives was, well, met.

The Alternet article asks the question: “Can Condoms Save Us From Climate Change?” The Optimum Population Trust, which commissioned the report, states in their press release: “The 34 gigatonnes of CO2 saved in this way [providing contraception] would cost $220 billion – roughly $7 a tonne. However, the same CO2 saving would cost over $1trillion if low-carbon technologies were used.” Providing contraception for unmet need is cheaper per ton than a host of other environmentally-friendly technologies, such as solar power, wind power, and hybrid or electric cars. Of the various sustainable lifestyle choices individuals can take, not having kids trumps–especially in developed countries, where the monetary and carbon costs of raising a child are far greater than in developing countries.

A key point here is that no one is suggesting we take a page from China’s book and institute kid quotas. The study considers the benefit of decreasing the number of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies by providing contraception to women who want it, but don’t have it. Furthermore, the study’s findings are underestimated because “unmet need” is only measured in married couples–and obviously there are many single, sexually active people out there, who are just as likely to face the problem of obtaining contraception as unmarried women.

Increased access to birth control for those who want it should already be a top priority in developing countries, since it combats other current problems: i.e. AIDS, hunger, poverty. Our contraception-distribution efforts and legislation such as PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) have been severely weakened by conservative religious meddling that insists on teaching abstinence-only for the unmarried, creates a stigma around condoms, and ignores the gendered power imbalances that often make it impossible for women to abstain from sex or insist on a faithful husband who wouldn’t put her at risk for sexually transmitted diseases.

On the downside, it’ll take a generation for the carbon-savings to go into effect. And the study has already been criticized by those who refuse to understand that it’s only looking at decreasing unwanted pregnancies, not at population control. As with abstinence-only programs, I wonder how much of this opposition actually comes down to a defense of the injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Of course, beyond the Christian connotations, there are other reasons to proffer as to why we would automatically feel that, not just us, but everyone else too, should be having kids–evolutionary motivations, the nation-state’s desire to gain power by numbers, etc. (Point: They aren’t necessarily good reasons.) The anti-childlessness prejudice is ingrained in the less- and non-religious as well: it’s a pervasive perspective. However, Christianity is tops around these parts in pushing the agenda of having lots of kids, and active as the biggest obstacle to altering this.

I’m not planning to have children. As it happens (though people who hear me make that statement immediately assume the opposite), I love kids. I used to visit the toddler next-door, entertaining her while her mother took a break, for fun (and for free). I’m just not interested in a career in motherhood: so many people, and children, already suffer from hunger, poverty, disease, I’m not comfortable adding another to the mix. The environmental issue is icing on my decision.

I hardly think this choice should be a controversial one. I would be wrong. I remember mentioning this to a conservative Catholic woman a couple years ago, to her shock and consternation. Her first response: Don’t you feel the need to give back to someone? I was a little confused, and pointed out that I was planning to go into do-gooder non-profit work, where I hoped to help and give back to, um, many people. I also have trouble with the concept of creating another life to give back for, since that hypothetical child wouldn’t exist to care either way if I didn’t make the choice to bring it into this messed-up world.

As a sop, since she appeared quite distressed, I indicated that I have considered adopting. “But don’t you feel the need to give back to your own child?” was the gist of her rejoinder. At the time, I thought this a strange and unique perspective, but I’ve run across it a number of times since. Adoption carries a major stigma in our society, which I can’t understand given that it seems more altruistic and helps a child already living and in need (and doesn’t add another set of carbon footprints). (I won’t get into the racial/racism problems involved in the fact that a greater number of white couples want to adopt, even competing for newborns, but not from the larger pool of non-white orphans domestically and abroad.)

If having children is important to you–go ahead, do it. I’ve no desire to deny anybody who finds meaning in childbearing, and this study isn’t looking at you. We’re not advocating an end to all children (I’m actually looking forward to when my friends have kids I can spoil.) However: the stigma against the choice to be childless, or to adopt, needs to stop. And those on the fence about having children, not having them, or adopting shouldn’t be subjected to an unthinking societal pressure to reproduce–let them make a free decision, taking into consideration the pros and cons of each side.

The environmental issues demonstrates yet again that our current mentality on having kids is out-of-whack, poses yet another problem with our failure to provide contraception to everyone who wants it. If the only people having kids were the ones actually wanting them, the world would be far better off–and not just in green terms. Imagine that.

Today, Presente.org and a host of other allied Latino organizations are helping CNN to help itself by calling for Dobbs’ termination. Recent events such as the Tiller murder or Holocaust museum shooting remind us that hate-filled language can lead to hate-driven actions; aware that Dobbs’ rhetoric puts them in danger, Latinos want to protect themselves by getting him off the air.

Ludicrous references to undocumented immigrants as “invaders” attempting to reconquer America inflame members of anti-immigrant groups like the Minuteman American Defense (MAD): in May, a Mexican man and his nine-year-old daughter were murdered by three members of the organization, which touts the tagline “doing the job our government won’t do.”

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center states:

How dangerous is Lou Dobbs? The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill – but that is the effect of what he does.

In a country where citizens of late have proven willing to resort to violence–in this case, even the killing of a child–in support of a hate-fueled extremist agenda, giving primetime air space to an incendiary force such as Dobbs cannot be justified. He can’t just be dismissed, ignored, as a voice out-of-touch with reality, because people listen to and believe him, especially with CNN giving him the appearance of legitimacy.

If you want Dobbs’ off the air, go to bastadobbs.com for more information and to tell the president of CNN that, with Lou, the network is a far cry from the “Most Trusted Name in News.”

Of course, Jesus Camp probably holds the honor for the most disturbing depiction of anti-science Christian fundamentalist homeschooling:

Sure, there are positives to homeschooling. My own mother sometimes wonders if I would have been better off homeschooled, citing the wasted time I frequently spent bored and learning little in the public school system (in what are considered good schools, comparatively). The public education has a lot of flaws No Child Left Behind did nothing to remedy, and homeschooling can look like an appealing way to accelerate your child’s learning, if you can afford the time commitment. In the realm of test scores, homeschooling has its successes and failures, just like public schools–the quality of the teacher is an important factor whether that s/he is a parent or professional.

Yet the larger problem is the impact of parental indoctrination on their children. Already, kids get most of their beliefs from their parents, for good and bad; school is the other major force in their lives, exposing them to diverse viewpoints. Although schools could certainly improve in encouraging students to think for themselves, when the parental and educational influence become one, children lack the experiences through which they could grow to discern the positive and negative in their parents’ beliefs and prejudices. (Whether their parents be evangelical Christians or atheists, liberal or conservative.)

Religion, unsurprisingly, raises the stakes. The Jesus Camp documentary states that a three-fourths of homeschooled children are evangelical Christians; Generation Joshua tells homeschoolers: “America is in a culture war. A few good soldiers can make a difference. Equip yourself and come join the battle!” And, unfortunately, passing the SATs doesn’t say anything about a students’ accurate knowledge of science or history, the areas in which the fundamentalist Christian Nation agenda tends to be weak on.

Sweden might have the right idea: it’s planning on banning homeschooling for “religious or philosophical” reasons, only allowing it in special exceptions, such as medical need. On the other hand, this action has garnered a lot of opposition, mainly from religious groups citing it as inference with protected belief, but also in terms of the inadequacies of the public education system and parental rights (what about children’s rights to a real education?).

In the end, I don’t have a ton of sympathy for homeschooling. There’s such a thing as too much parental control (although an involved parent who helps with homework and provides additional teaching afterschool is a fantastic asset), not to mention the social benefits to attending school with other kids. This doesn’t even take religious completely out of the equation–private and religious schools exist as options (whether that’s a positive or not). The best argument I see for homeschooling is one that not about instilling ideology but simply providing your children with a better education, basically an opt-out route.

However, like private schooling, this removes the people with means and time from wanting to push for stronger universal education, penalizing those left behind who don’t have the time to homeschool or the money to private school.

I particularly like Glenn Greenwald’s commentary on Salon over what it says that Americans aren’t expressing intense outrage at the U.S.’s cruel and inhumane punishment:

The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.