California’s Religious Wrong is on the warpath again; plus more links.

Hi there, time for a long overdue compilation of some great links. I hope you enjoy them! 🙂

First off, Crooks and Liars writes about a disgusting ad in California from the religious right in an attempt to fight the granting of marriage equality to the GLBT community. Momocrats have a post about Vermont’s legalizing gay marriage, and challenges California to do the same.

At The Curvature, Cara writes about what the MSM should be reporting on the “sexting” scares… Marcella of abyss2hope posted the latest edition of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence. Feministe let us know about an upcoming Take Back the Night march. Cara also warned everyone about how triggering and awful Seth Rogen’s new movie is. Marcella also reported about a serial rapist who is dragging his victims’ reputations through the mud…

Flip Flopping Joy has an important post about mountain top removal, a form of coal mining.

RH Reality Check has a great roundup of family planning news. They also have a great essay from a young lady about emergency contraception for teenage girls. MOMocrats write about international family planning issues, and have a list of charities that help with this issue.

Natalia Antonova shares some thoughts about Camille Paglia.

Reappropriate has info on a racist Texas State Representative who thinks Asian-Americans should change their names to make things easier on election workers. Racialicious has an interesting quote from Bai Ling about Asians and Hollywood’s stereotypes.

Reappropriate also has an article about actor Kal Penn joining the Obama administration.

Racialicious has an important article about Black women and domestic violence.

Renee of Womanist Musings calls Tyra Banks out on her encouragement of objectifying women.

Feministe wrote about FOX exploiting victims of the recession.

David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars wrote about how immigration is going to be a big issue with Republicans again.

From the Crafty Corner:

Etsy’s Dark Side has a gallery of Madhouse Mauly’s dark photography.

WhipUp has a book review of Switch Craft, a book that incorporates batteries into surprising projects.

And Flip Flopping Joy has a post about Michelle Obama planting her first seedlings in the White House’s victory garden. I was psyched to read this one; I just sowed my cilantro/coriander seeds yesterday! 🙂

Racist RNC-chairman contender shirks personal responsibility; plus more links.

Time for my roundup of blog links for the first time in such a long while. Here we go!

Racist pig Chip Saltsman, who is in the running for RNC chairman, tells Contessa Brewer that it’s all the *media’s* fault that he sent out a mixtape of racist songs including “Barack the Magic Negro” to his Republican buddies and got caught in the process. Yes Chip, blame the media!  H/T to Crooks and Liars.

Womanist Musings has an article about boneheaded comments made by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

abyss2hope writes about men who complain about “men haters” by spewing their own misogyny.

The Curvature brings up something I’d read the other day that depressed me: Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi says it’s impossible to protect Italian women from rape because they’re all so beautiful.

Michelle calls Rush Limbaugh out on his BS about the economy.

Season of the Bitch shares their thoughts on Rachel Maddow’s big interview with Rod Blagojevich.

Beyond Feminism talks about the breakdown of the nuclear family and what it means that an new alternative to it has not been found.

Racialicious explains why the Boston Globe is missing the point about why racial parity is important amongst the White House Press Corps.

Feministe has a great post on why the <a href=”http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/01/27/obama-getting-it-wrong-on-birth-control/”&gt; family planning provisions</a> in the stimulus package were important, up until they were tanked, anyway…

Rachel at Rachel’s Tavern posted about the scary actions of racist mobs in Australia.

HuffPo has an article on the House of Representative passing the stimulus bill without the help of the House Republicans.

Natalia Antonova writes about how the dire economic situation in Kiev, Ukraine is leading to more alcohol abuse and then more sexual harrassment and out of control behaviors in general. She then makes a great point, when are people going to quit excusing violence and harrassment with the phrase “he was drunk?”

Brownfemipower has some powerful insight on how the myths surrounding the life of Sacagawea affect Indigenous women and women of color living today.

MOMocrats have a post on President Obama’s interview with the al-Arabiya Network.

From the crafty department:

WhipUp shares how to make a purse from a “fat quarter” of fabric.

That’s it for now!

Linkage extravaganza; I’m playing catch up!

Hey everybody, I am backed up on my linkage post, so I will try to get through everything quickly. And after that I probably ought to upgrade my browser because frequently when I try to drop in on Crooks and Liars, it crashes! 😦

Ok, here goes:

Yesterday’s intended post

A Christian Liberal Perspective has a post on Bob Woodward’s new book which has some shocking comments from Dubya.

Feministe has an important post everyone should see. Get a load of this, when Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, rape victims were required to pay for their own rape kits (collection of forensic evidence). This happens in other places, but we are focusing on Palin’s record here. She probably could have done something about this, but didn’t. Why does Palin hate women?

MOMocrats has an awesome guest posting from a 96 year old grandma who talks about what it was like to vote for the first time 75 years ago, and reminds all of us that we need to get our butts to the polls!

Racialicious linked to an interesting Salon.com article which compares Palin’s positions on key issues to Islamic fundementalism…

Reappropriate has a thoughtful post about embryonic stem cell research.

The blogger at Season of the Bitch adds her thoughts to Little Light’s post about the police state.

Today’s linkage

Marcella at abyss2hope expounds on where the anti-choice arguement that great people in our society are sometimes born as the result of rape winds up.

Crooks and Liars has a post on this yucky Faux News “analyst’s” homophobic remarks against the awesome Rachel Maddow.

There’s a thoughtful post at Feministe urging lipstick feminists to be conscious of where we get our clothing, accessories, and beauty products from. We might be adding to the suffering of other women, or to animals.

This one’s for the barf bag: MOMocrats has a video clip of Meghan McCain callously insisting that no one knows the impact of the war like her family does. How ’bout we start with the families of the 4000+ people of our military who’ve been killed in Iraq, shall we Meghan? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! I should note that the MOMocrats have added their personal and powerful responses to Meghan’s boneheaded comment.

Natalia Antonova has a great and snark-filled response to the idiot who tried to derail her powerful post on the trafficking of Russian women with a whine about Russian “mail-order brides” who leave the Americans they marry…

Racialicious has a guest post from Angry Asian Man about racial stereotypes in the new TV show “Samurai Girl.”

And finally, A Christian Liberal Perspective has an excellent post on Christian fundamentalists trying to spread “democracy.”

I might not be canonized anytime soon, but I survived and I don’t regret it!

Time to open up a little bit up and talk about myself in a post, I guess. I’d rather it not be a heavy topic, but Feministe has a very good post on St. Maria Goretti, and in light of the discussion that is coming up from that post, I’ve decided I would write about how I feel about the canonization of Maria Goretti as well.

(Full disclosure: I come from a Protestant background, and will do everything I can to express myself respectfully in light of the centuries of conflict between Protestants and Catholics; besides, the first person to really show the love of Christ to me in my life was my late Catholic Grandma, if I made this post inherently anti-Catholic in nature, I would be disrespecting her memory and legacy too.)

For those who don’t know anything about Maria Goretti, you can read the Feministe link, or visit Wikipedia to read her story.

I first learned about the attempted rape and eventual murder of Maria Goretti in Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. I was reading the book because I was starting out to educate myself on feminism as teenager/young college student, and…I was trying to make sense of my experiences. I am a survivor of child sexual abuse, incest, and teenage sexual assault. At about the age of 18, I got involved in anti-rape and anti-abuse activism, locally and online. Brownmiller’s book is an education in itself due to it’s detailed history of sexual violence in human society.

When I read the part about Maria Goretti, I definitely was left with a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak. Survivors often struggle to have a sense of self-worth after losing their sense of dignity to sexual violence. The impression I got of the Maria Goretti canonization as a young survivor was the same impression I’d been getting from many other sources in society, that women and girls who’ve lived through sexual violence are not as valuable, that we are damaged goods, that we are somehow a problem. Why else, I thought, would women who died rather than be raped appear to be more valued spiritually than women who survived rape or abuse, and lived to fight and advocate passionately for the healing and restoration of the women and girls who would follow after them?

I don’t blame Maria Goretti for show she handled the situation that had been forced upon her. She was a child, and she shares no blame in this. I do worry what messages some in the Body of Christ, whether they are Catholic or Protestant, are sending to any and all survivors, whether they profess Christ or not. No one deserves victim blame, and victim blame has no place in the Church. So that any Catholic readers may understand that though this post was inspired by Maria Goretti, I am not singling out Catholicism, I experienced a painful situation with my previous church. I had been given a little booklet at my women’s Bible study, which had verses relating to certain topics that concern women, and I was horrified to discover that under “rape,” this booklet was admonishing me to not dress provocatively if I don’t want to be victimized again. Ummm, hello! Being covered up does not protect women from abuse, tragically. That too, left a bad taste in my mouth.

The “better dead than raped” adage is painful to be reminded of, as someone who, over the years of abuse and its aftermath, has struggled with PTSD, depression, and suicidality. I am still here though. I could have died during the abuse years, but I didn’t, and I am happy about that. I doubt anyone will be rushing to have me canonized once I do pass on, but that is alright with me. After counseling, finding the right medication, and making peace with God, it was worth it surviving the actual abuse, it was worth it to survive the crushing, suicidal depression. It was all worth it because I am here now, and I can find beauty and promise in life, and purpose. My life is more than what happened to me, and I am not damaged goods because of what has happened!

I would not trade places with Maria Goretti. I mean that as no insult. It’s simply how I feel. Sin has still been triumphed against because those who brutalized me failed to destroy me, and because it has helped me to look at my own conduct. And because I am still here, I will be able to help others ensure the sin of sexual abuse and assault will not destroy them either.

Why we should be concerned about Sarah Palin and reproductive health.

There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about Sarah Palin’s positions on women’s reproductive health, and we don’t need to drag her daughter into this, so we won’t.

Instead, it needs to be brought out into the open that Palin’s views are clear in some areas of reproductive health, and in others, not so much. For starters, Palin has made it very clear that she is opposed to abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest. In 2006, when Palin was the gubernatorial candidate for Alaska, she stated that she would oppose abortion in cases of rape and incest, even if it was her daughter who had been assaulted.

It’s interesting to me to note that the AP article I’ve linked states that Cindy McCain is in disagreement with Palin about denying rape and incest victims the right to choose after the right to choose had already been stripped from them by the perpetrator.

Abortion is something that I genuinely hate, but you would be hard-pressed to find me wanting to impose my will upon women who have already been imposed upon enough already. I don’t feel right about the idea I should be making decisions for women who’ve concieved through consentual sex either. I find it alarming that Palin thinks it is her right to force someone who has been raped already to undergo a second rape if they cannot or do not want to endure carrying the pregnancy to term.

And yet, this is just one thing to worry about when it comes to Palin and reproductive rights.

The Huffington Post blogger I’ve linked to also makes the following claim about Palin and birth control:

“Palin is a member of the deceptively named “Feminists for Life” who would criminalize not only abortion but the IUD and hormonal birth control methods (e.g. the pill).”

This is very worrisome, as access to contraception and the ability to decide for ourselves whether we want to use it, should be a basic right. Women should be able to decide for ourselves whether we want to be pregnant in the first place, and also be able to decide whether forms of birth control can help us in other ways, such as the treatment of ovarian cancer, PCOS, difficult menstrual cycles, and more. Palin is following in the footsteps of the disasterous Bush administration with its myopic viewpoint that contraception = illicit sex & abortion, and that women have no right to decide whether we get pregnant or not.

One area where things are not quite as clear, is it seems Palin has flip-flopped a little on sex-education. According to Huffington Post, Palin stated in an Eagle Forum questionaire that she supported abstinence-only education, and opposed school-funded comphrensive sex ed. Yet the Los Angeles Times reports that weeks later she was quoted at a debate as saying, “I’m pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues.”

Hmmm….I like the second answer much better! Kids need to be armed with information. I believe abstinence is a very valid choice; I practice it after all; but knowledge is power, and it gives kids a shot at preventing pregnancies and STDs in the event they decide to go the other route. I would hope that Palin would ignore the Eagle Forum on this one, but I won’t hold my breath. Amazingly, Cindy McCain is more progressive on this issue as well; she feels kids should be taught abstinence *and* about contraception! Whoa!

To wrap this up, all of this raises very serious questions about Palin, her thoughts on reproductive health, and what a John McCain presidency would look like. I gather it wouldn’t be pretty.

Here are some additional links about Palin’s record on reproductive health, teenage mothers, and special needs children:

Crooks and Liars: Sarah Palin slashed funding for teen pregnancy programs

MOMocrats: Sarah Palin slashes funds for special needs children

Pioneer Times Journal/AP: Sen. McCain opposed funding teen pregnancy prevention programs

And also, a really good article from Slate, Bristol’s Choice.

NP: Armored Saint: Book of Blood