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grrrly news 9/7

September 7, 2003 08:14 AM posted by lisa : track it (0)

Court rejects 'wrongful life' claims
The Kentucky Supreme Court, ruling Thursday in two cases of children with profound birth defects, said the parents who missed the chance to have abortions cannot sue for "wrongful life." Nor can the children themselves sue for negligence.
The court said it was unwilling to equate loss of an abortion opportunity with a "legal injury," a necessary element of negligence. Two justices said the very idea evoked the Nazi era under Adolf Hitler.

Feminist teacher defends her prostitution
A Berkeley, Calif., High School teacher is defending her moonlighting career as a prostitute, comparing herself to Martin Luther King Jr. in her fight to decriminalize the vocation.
"As a feminist I believe in every woman's right to self-determination, and that includes sexually and economically,'' Shannon Williams, 37, told the San Jose Mercury News.

Staking a claim
Capitol Park memorial honors gay veterans
A small marker unveiled Tuesday in Capitol Park was hailed by gay-rights advocates as the first such state-sanctioned landmark honoring gay and lesbian soldiers killed in action.
The tiny memorial -- about a foot long -- graces the walkway of the California Veterans Memorial and is engraved with an eagle and the words "In Honor of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Veterans Killed in Action."

Mother in new appeal against death by stoning
A SINGLE mother sentenced to death by stoning for adultery cuddled and nursed her baby yesterday in an Islamic appeals court yesterday as lawyers argued for her life.

Amina Lawal, 32, appeared overwhelmed by the crush of riot police, journalists and rights workers as she arrived for her hearing in the northern Nigeria state of Katsina.

"All these cameras, all these policemen," she said, with tears in her eyes as she made her way inside. "I’ve never been this afraid. I’m tired of all this."

Top Catholic Sees Anti-Gay Marriage Moves
The Roman Catholic Church will intensify its efforts to prevent legalization of same-sex marriage, the president of the nation's Catholic bishops said Friday.
Bishop Wilton D. Gregory said the bishops could endorse a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as only heterosexual, though he stopped short of making such an endorsement himself.

Law Takes Aim At 'Hunting For Bambi'
The man behind "Hunting for Bambi" -- videos of men hunting naked women -- is facing some legal trouble.
Michael Burdick sold videos of guys shooting at naked women with paintball guns. Las Vegas authorities say he was operating a business without a license.

Potomac Watch: Abortion foes upbeat about fetal-protection bills
Republicans are confident that they are on the cusp of winning an eight-year battle to outlaw a controversial medical procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion, the first in a handful of measures aimed at enacting limits on abortion.
They are also upbeat about approving legislation that would make it a federal crime to kill or harm a fetus.

Women juggling life choices
Figuring out how to launch a career and a family -- often at the same time -- remains a primary source of anxiety for many professional women. And women's gains in the workforce in the past generation mean that more of them than ever are struggling with the issue.
Women earned 41 percent of master's degrees in business in 2001, compared with 8 percent in 1975, government statistics show. The percentage of mothers in the labor force rose from 47.4 percent in 1975 to 72.2 percent in 2002.

Women ignore breast cancer signs
Many women may be risking their lives by failing to seek early medical help when they spot possible signs of breast cancer, a study suggests.

Hard to swallow
To millions of Latin American women denied legal abortion, pills originally designed to treat ulcers have become a controversial symbol of hope. Louise Rimmer investigates

Iraqi girlfriends capture GI hearts
In the 20 weeks since the fall of Baghdad, two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi women won each other's hearts.
The American men and Iraqi women courted, fell in love and decided to marry, but they had to battle disapproving senior American officers and fears of retribution by militant Iraqis.
When they finally held their double wedding ceremony Aug. 17, the nuptials were carried out with the secrecy and synchronization of a commando operation.

Administration Deals Blow to Campus Censorship
Campus speech codes and other regulations governing student behavior should not attempt to infringe on the free speech rights of students, the Department of Education warned colleges and universities in a letter mailed last month.

Gay gun advocates create Pink Pistols
Gay rights usually are seen as part of the liberal agenda, with gun rights of interest to conservatives. So gays with guns cut across the grain of America's political landscape.
That's fine with Albert Lowe, who is starting a Michigan chapter of the Pink Pistols, a gay gun-rights group with 37 chapters in the United States and at least 5,000 members.

In search of feminists
In 1968, feminists staged a protest outside the Miss America pageant. In 2003, a women's studies major will compete in it
This confused state of feminism doesn't surface only at beauty pageants. I have sat beside the lake at Wellesley College in Massachusetts with some peers and have been surprised by their comments. These women tell me that the battle for equality has been won. They are respected and feel confident they can get any job they want. Yet they still bemoan the fact that they can't find boyfriends.

Why Buffy Kicked Ass
When Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB Network in 1996, American culture was in trouble. Americans were bowling alone, pursuing individual interests to the detriment of the communal good. Business leaders were celebrating creativity and neglecting discipline. Nike’s "Just do it" ads were teaching young people to break the rules. Hollywood was turning out "nightmares of depravity."
Americans had forgotten bourgeois virtue. Freedom and affluence had made us soft. We were self-indulgent moral nihilists -- materialistic, selfish, and impulsive. We might have been having fun, but we’d created a culture no one would fight for.

Don't blame girls, women
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is troubled by recent suggestions that girls and women are somehow to blame for the fact that boys are not excelling in certain academic areas. Is there a "gender war" being waged against boys, as some have claimed?
Gender inequity in education is a complex issue. Two years ago, AAUW published "Beyond the 'Gender Wars,' " a summary of the views of some of America's foremost researchers of boys and girls regarding a range of gender-equity questions. One of the major conclusions shared by these researchers was that we do not need to "fix the boys" or "fix the girls."

Where's TV's gay courtship leading?
As Hollywood winds down its gay, gay summer -- dominated in media circles by Bravo's ubiquitous makeover series "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" -- the debate has begun shifting from tonnage to quality and whether TV's latest infatuation benefits the gay community or simply exploits it.
Gay men have become TV's foremost fashion accessory, shown to possess fabulous taste and deliver the best catty one-liners at any party -- the contemporary equivalent of Paul Lynde on "Hollywood Squares." It's a stereotype, to be sure, but one welcomed by some activists because in many ways it's a positive stereotype, from the "Queer Eye" gang to the gals' gay buddies on "Sex and the City" to a gay couple's impeccably decorated home on ABC's fall comedy "It's All Relative."

Discover the history, facts and arguments for the Rape Shield Law
Rape Shield Law: Laws in 49 states (AZ does not have a Rape Shield Law) limit the use of a victim's prior sexual history as an attempt to undermine the credibility of the victim's testimony.

Teen Girls Flooding Kenya's New No-Cost Schools
Kenya's recent introduction of free primary education helps girls forced out of school by poverty to regain lost ground. The girls, however, still face many challenges, from the humiliation of worn-out uniforms to views favoring boys' education

Statistics Suggest More Rape Victims Speak Up
More women are reporting rapes and trusting that law-enforcement will take their charges seriously. That is the good news that advocates of sex-assault victims are reading in governmental statistics about rape in 2002

Sex Assault Now a Political Act in Zimbabwe
Sexual assault is prevalent in Zimbabwe, according to rights groups. Concubinage in youth militia camps and the governmental use of rape as a means of punishing female political dissidents are both forms of the problem

Second Strip-and-Freeze Suit Hits Courts
Deborah Flick, 39, a student teacher, on Wednesday charged the city of San Francisco and its police and sheriff's departments with strip-searching and jailing her in a so-called cold room without any criminal charges filed against her, according to Bay City News.
She says she was arrested in March and forcibly strip-searched twice after she refused to consent to a search.

White Mob Attacks Prudence Crandall's School
Prudence Crandall was a Quaker, a white woman who believed in education regardless of gender or race. In the fall of 1832, after a year's success with the daughters of wealthy local families in Canterbury, Conn., she opened the doors of her academy to Sarah Harris, who was free, black and 20 years old.
Mayhem ensued. Whites fled. The school closed. Aided by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and free black communities throughout the North, she defiantly reopened in 1833 as a boarding and teacher-training school with a class of 20 black female students, some from as far away as Boston, Philadelphia or New York City.
What followed was worse than mayhem. Town residents persuaded the state legislature to outlaw private schools for nonresident colored persons. Church bells tolled in Canterbury the day the legislation passed.

Religious Leader Who Recommend Wife-Beating Sued
Spanish women's groups, concerned about violence against immigrant women, press charges against a Saudi-born imam who wrote a book that they charge condones violence against women.

Girls' Gains in School Don't Subtract from Boys'
Media that clamor about girls making academic strides at the expense of boys put a misleading spin on the data. They also overlook important and disturbing trends, such as talented children of both sexes shying away from careers in business

Lower Male Income Causes Tightest Wage Gap
This Labor Day, women can look back on the second quarter of the year as the boasting the narrowest wage gap in history. The statistic, however, was caused by lower male wages and is not expected to end the earnings-discrepancy debate

Opportunities for women will grow with economy, say job experts
As the economy improves, so too will employment gains for women, job experts say.
Women already are attending law and medical school at nearly the same rate as men, and more of them are getting undergraduate degrees than their male counterparts.
In the work force, women are most represented in retail sales, teaching, administration and nursing, according to the U.S. Labor Department. While health care is traditionally a female-dominated field, it stands to offer even more diverse opportunities in years ahead as the population ages, economists said.

Botswana hosts beauty pageant for HIV-positive women
Donning both shimmering evening gowns and traditional Botswana costumes of animal skin skirts and beaded necklaces, porcupine quills adorning their hair, fourteen women competed in a beauty pageant for HIV-positive women and their relatives.
Some 38 percent of Botswana's people are HIV positive, the highest infection rate in the world. Having AIDS in Botswana is often associated with shame and stigma and the organizers of Saturday's Miss. HIV Stigma Free said they hoped the contest would show the disease does not have to prevent women from being vibrant and beautiful.

Overcoming isolation is a problem for immigrant women in abusive situations
Domestic abuse cuts across all social and cultural lines in Grand Island.
Crisis Center volunteer Gina Long said poor women, middle-class women and women in upper income brackets all can be victims of abuse.
Abuse is often an issue of power and control for the abuser, Long said. Because the abuser is so controlling, women in an abusive situation often feel very isolated. Isolated women often feel powerless, feeling they don't know who to turn to for help.
However, Spanish-speaking women who are immigrants to this country sometimes can have even more intense feelings of isolation, Long said.

Razanne offers image of modesty, self-esteem for Muslim girls
If Ken has any designs on this doll, he'd better convert to Islam and be prepared to fork out a hefty dowry because Razanne's looking for more in a man than the macho, debonaire image that Barbie's beau flaunts.
Instead, with her long-sleeved dresses, hijab or Muslim head scarf and, by her creator Ammar Saadeh's own admission, a less-than-flattering bust-line, Razanne is all about modesty and piety.

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