Gender and Sexuality

Weekly Torah Commentary: Vayishlach- On Not Blaming the Victim

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…one who is sensitive to these matters cannot help feeling that simply ignoring the most prominently accepted commentator does not heal the added injustice done to Dinah and Leah (injustice one: the actual crime, injustice two: a tradition blaming the victims for the crime). The tradition of using these texts as a proof for the value of modesty is a long one, and it becomes to some degree a third trauma, to all the women who read this, who thus internalize a subtext of personal responsibility for crimes of this sort…

Culture

That's Not Fair! Straight couple denied health insurance…

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Last night as we helped our friends at Design Action Collective celebrate their many years of successfully empowering justice movements (including being the art designers for Tikkun Magazine for a long while), we met a young man who told us a stunning tale. He had tried to get his wife onto his health insurance plan and the company turned them down. Why? Because they weren’t legally married. He and the woman he loved had decided that marriage equality was an important enough justice issue that until their GLBTQ friends could get legally married, they wouldn’t.

art

Recipe for a Revolution with Chipped Turquoise Nails: A Review of Love Cake: Poems by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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I am not sure how to convey the power of this poetry collection. I can tell you that once I picked up Love Cake, I could not put it down until I finished every poem, even though I sometimes had to read through my tears. Upon finishing, I immediately had to call a femme friend to read her a poem that reminded me of her. Relocating from my couch to my bed, I sank in and re-read the entire collection. I want to say that the poems tore out my heart.

Culture

Manufacturing Controversy: Chaz Bono and the “Christian” Right

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I think it is fabulous that Chaz Bono is a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars” this season. He is the first transgendered competitor on the show, and one of the first on television, and I think his presence is going to push our culture in a positive, more inclusive direction. And I am appalled by the opposition that his participation has wrought, particularly all the mean-spirited and ignorant comments from people who don’t have any understanding of the experience of being transgendered yet think they can stand in judgment of another person’s choices – especially when the ignorance comes from professionals who ought to know better. That is to say, it’s bad enough that narrow-minded moms are insisting they don’t want their children to set eyes on Chaz – although their indignation begs the question: How would children even know Chaz is not a bio-man, just from watching the show? It is even worse when Bryan Fisher of the American Family Association, a professed Christian, tries to score political points by directing his self-righteous venom at Chaz, venom he usually reserves for Muslims:
Chaz Bono, the surgically-altered daughter of Sonny and Cher, has become America’s newest celebrity by appearing on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”

Gender and Sexuality

Gender Bias in Israel’s Protest Movement

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When I returned from a six-month kibbutz experience in Israel in 1974, I felt the “culture shock” of reentry into American society. What surprised me most was that I suddenly became aware of women driving cars, and that it seemed strange. You see, on the kibbutz where I had been living, only one woman was given permission to drive the kibbutz car, and she was considered a little odd. I had become acculturated to the gender bias of that time and place. Of course, the Israel I knew has progressed in many ways around this issue, but the struggle continues.

Christianity

Should a Submissive Wife Run for President? The Case of Michele Bachmann

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In the Christian Bible it says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24). Michele Bachmann says she is a Biblical literalist and claims to be a submissive wife. As documented on the Slate website,
In a speech at a mega-church in the Minneapolis area back in 2006, Michele Bachmann explained her decision to pursue tax law.

art

Imagining a Different Future: Family Accountability in Eliaichi Kimaro’s A Lot Like You

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When I saw Eliaichi Kimaro’s moving and complex documentary A Lot Like You at the Seattle International Film Festival in June 2011, one of my first responses to this film was to recognize it as a model for a personal and family accountability process. Having just finished reviewing The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities for Bitch magazine, I was interested in seeing more concrete examples of community accountability, which the authors define as “any strategy to address violence, abuse or harm that creates safety, justice, reparations, and healing without relying on police, prisons, childhood protective services, or any other state systems.” A Lot Like You brings to life the complicated, messy, beautiful, and liberatory process of addressing harm and seeking healing within a family context. I sought out Eliaichi, a Seattle filmmaker and activist, for an interview and was excited to learn that she also sees her film as capturing the beginning of a family accountability process. The film was originally titled Worlds Apart, and its change to A Lot Like You reflects the journey that Eliaichi embarked upon while creating this documentary about her relationship to her father’s side of the family – the Chagga tribe in Tanzania, who live on the slopes of Mt.

Gender and Sexuality

Opposing Free Contraceptives? Does the Christian Right Want to Lower the Abortion Rate or Not?

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There was good news on the front page of the New York Times this week. Apparently, “a leading medical advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as one of the several preventive services under the new health care law,” and the Obama administration is “inclined to accept the panel’s advice.” Even better, no Congressional approval is required. As Senator Barbara Mikulski put it, “We are one step closer to saying goodbye to an era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition. We are saying hello to an era where decisions about preventive care and screenings are made by a woman and her doctor, not by an insurance company.”

Gender and Sexuality

Straight Talk on 'Pinkwashing' Israel and the Flotilla

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An article at Salon.com, “Pink-washed: Gay rights and the Mideast conflict” by Justin Elliot, discusses both “A hoax video trying to paint pro-Palestinian activists as anti-gay …,” and the fact that Israeli policies regarding LGBT people are actually progressive:

A mysterious video painting the organizers of the latest Gaza flotilla as anti-gay was exposed as a hoax last week, in the latest instance of what pro-Palestinian activists call “pinkwashing.” The term refers to efforts by the Israeli government and its allies to highlight the rights afforded to the gay community in Israel — and the plight of gays in Arab countries and the Palestinian territories — to distract from or justify the continued occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza. … This video appeared on YouTube purporting to show an American gay rights activist explaining his rejection by — and disillusionment with — the organizers of the latest Gaza flotilla. It was promptly promoted on social media by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an intern in Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.