Category: Full Frontal Feminism

‘Progressive’

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Dem who came in first in Tuesday night’s runoff, is a pro-LGBTQ, pro-choice liberal who pulling a near majority in a solid GOP district. Here’s what Bernie said about him

Asked if Mr. Ossoff is a progressive, Mr. Sanders, an independent who challenged Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, demurred. “I don’t know,” he said.

Instead, here’s the guy he’s backing:

He plans to campaign Thursday in Nebraska with Heath Mello, a former Nebraska state senator who in 2009 sponsored legislation requiring women to look at ultrasound image of their fetus before receiving an abortion.

At the time Mr. Mello called the proposal a “positive first step” toward reducing the number of abortions in Nebraska. It became law months later.

Mello is still opposed to abortion. But women’s rights are optional! All Bernie cares about is Wall Street, which strikes me as a tad tone deaf, considering that women are leading the Trump resistance.

Pussy power fights back

~ susie

seattle-womens-march-jan-2017-4

Lovely piece by Joan Walsh that made me feel I was there:

The incredible march turnout was restorative to me—especially the robust presence of men, I have to say. No one can quantify the extent to which a misogynist backlash hurt Hillary Clinton, and no one wants to talk about it—male or female—lest it lead us to conclude we shouldn’t run another woman for about 100 years. But there’s no denying that discomfort with social change, and with the evolving and increasingly powerful role of women, drove the Trump campaign. “No one cherishes women more than I do,” he told us. And then on that Access Hollywood video he said he could “grab them by the pussy.” That’s the patriarch’s dream—protect the ones who are yours, defile the ones who aren’t, and don’t let any of them—have autonomy and power. Because at some primal level, they are afraid we have all the power—“pussy power!,” as many signs read (and as those waves of pink hats signified). We are fighting something old and deep and powerful, and a lot of men—from billionaires to scrubs, including scrubs who are billionaires, like Trump—are fighting back.

On Saturday, we showed them who we are, and we showed ourselves, too. Even Chait acknowledged it was important in New York magazine—“Don’t let anyone tell you the marches didn’t matter”—although he couldn’t bring himself to actually say what the marches were about, or who organized them.

That’s OK. We know the marches mattered. And we know why. I’ll never forget what it felt like when I realized the marchers were everywhere; I couldn’t leave them if I wanted to. They were walking me all the way home, which is all we can do for one another in this world.

Women’s March draws bigger crowds than inauguration

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

A half-million in D.C., and more than 600 marches in 60 countries around the world:


Continue reading “Women’s March draws bigger crowds than inauguration” →

How those damned Hallmark Christmas movies helped Hillary lose

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

As it turns out, I was not the only Hillary supporter grieving over her loss to the Cheeto Bandito by immersing herself in Christmas movies. It wasn’t as if we could stand to watch cable news, the same bastards who savaged her and ignored Trump’s endless conflicts of interest. So Hallmark and Lifetime seemed like realistic… Continue reading “How those damned Hallmark Christmas movies helped Hillary lose” →

Pantsuit feminism!

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Maybe you guys don’t remember what it took for us to be able to wear pants.

As late as 1938, a woman was arrested in Los Angeles for wearing pants in a courtroom, and was jailed for five days. The movie star Katharine Hepburn was frowned upon by Hollywood for wearing blue jeans to the set.

In 1969, I was sent home from public school for wearing pants to class. The walk to school was long, the winter was cold, and skirts were short. As I had on this day, I often chose to speed my trip to school by riding a bike, and I was sick of having the difference between the time it took to either walk or ride eaten up by having to get to the girls room to get changed ahead of class, an inconvenience that had no comparison among my male classmates. My fashion “don’t” caused quite a stir. Had I worn a floor-length skirt, I would have been deemed weird, but not in violation of the dress code. But the sight of pants on the female form, it seemed, was transgressively distracting. It earned me my junior-high nickname, “Stan the man.”

In 1993, only months after Hillary Rodham Clinton became first lady, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, the first African-American woman (and the first woman of color) to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, joined Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland in wearing pants on the Senate floor, prompting the sergeant-at-arms to change the archaic rule prohibiting women senators so clad from standing at their desks in the upper chamber.

Dirty old perv

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Antonin Scalia Law School Dedication

Seems that Anita Hill wasn’t the only person harassed by Clarence Thomas. But he is also the justice least likely to resign over a scandal:

The anticipation of meeting a U.S. Supreme Court justice for the first time turned to shock and distress for a young Truman Foundation scholar in 1999 when, she says, Justice Clarence Thomas grabbed and squeezed her on the buttocks several times at a dinner party.

On Oct. 7, a night dominated by the disclosure of Donald Trump’s audio-recorded boasts about grabbing women, Moira Smith posted on Facebook a memory of her encounter with Thomas. “He groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit ‘right next to him,’ ” Smith wrote. Smith, now vice president and general counsel to Enstar Natural Gas Co., in Alaska, was 23 at the time of the dinner party at the Falls Church, Virginia, home of her boss.

Smith’s claim came amid the outrage and ongoing national conversation about inappropriate sexual treatment of women by powerful men, male acquaintances and strangers. The disclosure of the Trump tape has spurred women in startling numbers to come forward publicly with old memories of unwanted touches.

Smith spoke with The National Law Journal/Law.com multiple times by email and phone after she revealed her allegation on Facebook. Her three former housemates during the spring and summer of 1999 each said in interviews they remembered Smith describing inappropriate contact by Thomas after she came home that night from the dinner or early the next morning. They also remembered their own shock and inability to advise her about how to respond. Another Truman scholar that summer, whom Smith would later marry and divorce, said in an interview he “definitely remembered” her sharing with him what had happened soon after the dinner party.

Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions: What sexual assault?

~ susie

Mike Pence & Jeff Sessions

“Why, we just call that an Alabama howdy!”

Interviewed in the spin room after the presidential debate in St. Louis, in which Trump brushed off the comments as “locker room talk,” the Alabama senator noted that the real estate mogul already apologized for his “very improper language.”

“But beyond the language, would you characterize the behavior described in that as sexual assault if that behavior actually took place?” the Weekly Standard asked.

“I don’t characterize that as sexual assault,” Sessions replied. ”I think that’s a stretch. I don’t know what he meant—“

“So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?” the Weekly Standard pressed.

“I don’t know. It’s not clear that he—how that would occur.”

You just grab them by the whatever and yell, “HOWDY!”