Recent news about the Obama administration’s actions in Libya has generated some of the most absurd commentary on gender and politics we’ve seen. This National Review Online post is disgraceful, naturally (but has one of the best comment threads I’ve ever read). But neo-cons aren’t the only wrong-headed commentators. Over at The Nation blogs, Robert Dreyfuss wrote a post titled “Obama’s Women Advisers Pushed War Against Libya“, in which he actually proclaimed:
So three or four of Obama’s advisers, all women, wanted war against Libya … Unless President Obama’s better instincts manage to reign in his warrior women—and happily, there’s a chance of that—the United States could find itself engaged in open war in Libya, and soon.
Fellow Nation blogger Katha Pollitt offered an incisive response, and made a bold but compelling claim: “Misogyny—it’s the last acceptable prejudice of the left.” Also worth reading is The Atlantic’s Garance Frankie-Ruta “On the Idiocy of Framing the Libya Intervention as a Battle of the Sexes“.
In remembrance of the 146 lives lost 100 years ago in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Nancy Goldstein commemorates the event’s role as a historic turning point in the American labor movement.
In this time of corporate-led anti-union and anti-regulation fervor, we need to hold firm when it comes to defending workers’ rights.
Read the full article at The American Prospect.
There’s this crazy U.S. organization called Family Watch International (FWI). If you believe what they say on their website, homosexuality can be cured, the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is “a ticking time bomb for women and families” and promiscuity and domestic violence in marriage will skyrocket if same-sex marriage is legalized. All that’s bad, but the worst part: they’ve infiltrated the U.N. FWI sponsored U.N. delegates from 23 different countries to attend their first annual “Global Family Policy Forum” at this year’s U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. Feministing’s Lori Adelman has more.
At Racialicious, guest contributor Daniel José Older shares what he learned from nightly encounters with violence against women as a New York City paramedic.
Finally, and most thrillingly for us Ms. folks, Stephen Colbert gave Ms. a shout-out on Thursday night’s Colbert Report during an interview with his guest, Nobel laureate and co-founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative Jody Williams.
Above: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the launch of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s “Saving Lives at Birth” initiative. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Medill DC, under CC 2.0.
