we have brains

grrrly news 02/29

February 29, 2004 02:56 PM posted by lisa : track it (0)

San Francisco to resume gay marriages, dividing Americans and politicians
San Francisco city officials will keep handing marriage licenses to gay couples, the city's mayor said as he defiantly pressed on with a controversial policy that is dividing Americans.
Nearly 3,300 same-sex marriages have been administered at San Francisco City Hall since February 12, but gay couples will now have to make appointments to marry, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told CNN's Late Edition Sunday

Judge in Portugal Acquits Seven in Abortion Case
Ten "accomplices" including their husbands, boyfriends, and the doctor who performed the abortions in 1997, also were cleared.
Judge Paulo Brandao found there was insufficient evidence to convict the defendants, and said, "The decision is a healthy signal for society," according to the state news agency Lusa.

LDP eyes child abuse law update
A Liberal Democratic Party committee on Tuesday issued proposed revisions to the law against child abuse that would allow police to forcibly enter homes where abuse is suspected and parents have refused on-site inspections by a child consultation center.
The committee aims to submit its revisions to the Diet during the current session as a legislator-sponsored bill, after securing support from other parties, members said.

Congress Will Vote Again on Pro-Life Unborn Victims Bill, Senate May Too
The House of Representatives is expected to vote again on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act next week. The legislation, which the House has approved twice before, will allow prosecutors to charge criminals who kill or injure an unborn child as a result of an attack on a pregnant mother.
The House vote is expected next Thursday, February 28th, while the National Right to Life Committee says the Senate may vote soon after.

Women Are Majority of College Students
When Hunter College salutatorian Chamion Thomas peers into the future, she sees graduate school followed by a professional career — but not in higher education.
Women comprise 58 percent of the nation's 13 million college undergraduates and, in 2002, earned more doctorates than men. They're a dominant force on college campuses — until they receive a degree

Ashcroft Mulls Asylum for Battered Women
Immigration and human rights groups are hoping that a legal brief they have submitted to Attorney General John Ashcroft will persuade him to permit women who have suffered severe domestic abuse in their homeland to receive political asylum in the United States.

Coach suspended
The University of Colorado suspended head football coach Gary Barnett on Wednesday, two hours after yet another sexual assault allegation was leveled against his program

U.S. Must Pay In Men-Purge Scheme
The U.S. Small Business Administration has been ordered to pay more than $500,000 to a former employee who said her boss forced her to quit for refusing to go along with a scheme to discriminate against male workers.

A federal judge said the agency and its director, Hector Barreto, should have known about the mistreatment of Mary Conway-Jepson in the agency's Montana office, and failed to do anything.

Law may be changed to get more male teachers
The Federal Government will try to force changes to anti-discrimination laws to increase the number of male teachers in schools as a way of redressing a crisis in boys' education.
If the Catholic Education Office loses a court appeal in April to allow for male-only teacher scholarships, the Government could act to change anti-discrimination laws to make it possible, Education Minister Brendan Nelson said. And asked if the Government would consider offering its own men-only scholarship program, Dr Nelson said it was "a thought".

Panel to study why boys lagging in school
Piscataquis Community High School Principal Kevin Jordan was taken aback recently when he realized that, during the past five years, almost three times as many girls as boys in his school had been named to the National Honor Society."I don't necessarily walk around thinking, 'How many girls? How many boys?'" said the Guilford principal. "But when you go back and look at the numbers, it's pretty striking."
Statewide, boys are underperforming in myriad ways, lagging behind girls in grades, education aspirations and college attendance

Magazine details harassment at Yale
Naomi Wolf, author of "The Beauty Myth," claims professor Harold Bloom put his hand on her inner thigh in the late fall of 1983 while she was seeking his input on poetry she had written.

A sneak preview of the article in New York magazine sent out Saturday details Wolf’s ignored pleas for action in 1983 and years later when the Ivy League school asked her to participate in campus events

Congress to grill Pentagon on response to sex assaults
Several high-level Pentagon officials will face what is expected to be vigorous questioning by members of a congressional committee Wednesday into how the U.S. military deals with sexual-assault and domestic-violence cases.
Department of Defense Undersecretary David Chu, who oversees personnel issues, will testify on Capitol Hill, along with a slate of generals for each service branch, in response to growing reports of poor treatment of rape victims, particularly those serving as combat support in Iraq and Afghanistan.

New Mexico County Allows Same-Sex Marriages
Officials in a New Mexico county next to Santa Fe said on Friday they have granted their first same-sex marriage licenses, making the state the latest battleground in the fight over gay marriage,
But it appeared uncertain whether the practice would continue as the state's attorney general declared the same-sex marriages invalid under state law late in the afternoon, prompting officials to scramble through law books to review statutes for marriage in New Mexico

Mexican officials arrest suspects in New York-linked sex slavery ring
A gang that seduced or kidnapped females and then forced them into prostitution in Mexico and in New York has been crushed by arrests on both sides of the border, Mexican officials said Monday.

Mexican federal agents arrested six people in this country this month in an operation linked to the January arrests of four others in the Queens borough of New York, the federal Interior Department said in a news release

'Medically accurate' sex-ed bill advances
The Senate Education Committee voted Monday to spell out that if schools opt to offer sex education, they must provide "medically accurate" information.
That is defined in SB 1096 as being supported by scientific research and recognized as accurate and objective "by leading professional organizations and agencies with relevant expertise in the field."
Rachael Chanes, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona, told the committee the measure is necessary. Some of what passes for sex education in public schools may be doing more harm than good, she said.

Website claims to be the first to offer human eggs for sale
An internet service which claims to be the first to offer a global database of human eggs for sale to infertile women has been launched in Britain.
The website, www.WomanNotIncluded.com, offers eggs to women prepared to pay a registration fee, and then extra for searches of the database and consequent introductions.

Two in U.S. Accused of Genital Mutilation
As the U.S. government prepares to prosecute its first case under a federal law prohibiting FGM, activists are pushing for better legal protection of girls who can face the disfiguring practice when they go to any of 28 African countries.

Daughter of Justice Blackmun Goes Public about Roe
As Justice Blackmun's archives are about to go public, the daughter of the author of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade talks about the collection, the hate mail her father brought home and her own emergence as a pro-choice advocate.

Black Women's History Gaining Ascendancy
Major research by historians is redefining what we know about the role of black women during slavery and the civil rights era. In part, this research is the result of a rising band of black women historians

Vagina Monologues Stirs Up Cairo
Proceeds of the first public staging of "The Vagina Monologues" in Egypt last week will go toward one of the few battered-women's shelters in the Middle East. The performances drew overflow crowds and some public censure

Women Need More From More Magazine
More Magazine seems ambivalent about its mission to reach the over-40 woman. While daring to portray some women without makeup and Size-8 figures, it peddles advice that seems more geared to concealing the reader's age than celebrating it.

Iraqi Women Join High-Risk Security Effort
The female contingent of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps is turning heads in the country and putting a female face on the struggle to stabilize Iraq

Juarez March Heightens Pressure to Solve Murders
In Mexico, a Valentine's Day march organized by V-Day focused more international attention on the brutal murders of hundreds of women in Juarez. Activists hope it will add to the political pressure to solve the murders

Egypt's Leading Feminist Unveils Her Thoughts
In an interview with Women's eNews, prominent feminist and human rights activist Nawal El Saadawi discusses the current crisis of Egyptian feminism and the role of progressive activists living under repressive Arab regimes

Chronicle Assesses Bias; 112 Sex Assaults by Military
The San Francisco Chronicle this week says it will become more conscious of its graphic coverage of gender and race groups to ensure that the paper accurately represents the population that it covers.
The paper's deputy editor, Narda Zacchino, committed to a yearlong look at every section in an attempt to measure coverage in terms of race, gender, economic status, geography and age.
During the past 14 months, women in the military services in the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas have accused U.S. military personnel of 112 incidents of sexual misconduct, according to Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that covers military affairs.
In Congressional testimony Wednesday, military leaders reported 86 cases in the Army, 12 in the Navy, eight in the Air Force and six in the Marine Corps, the newspaper reported.

Albion College celebrates Women's History Month
The Guerrilla Girls -- an anonymous troupe of women who take a humorous poke at sexism and racism -- will take the stage Monday as part of the annual Anna Howard Shaw Women's History Month at Albion College.
Events featured throughout the month include lectures, music, films and a seminar focusing on diversity in the business place.

Students put abortion views aside to share effort for women
Two years ago, eight students belonging to a group called Vanderbilt Feminists marched out of a speech sponsored by their ideological opposites at Vanderbilt University, Students for Life.
The pro-life group wasn't happy about the pro-choice group's demonstration, and natural tensions naturally escalated.
But the two organizations recently put aside their profound philosophical differences and came together on their biggest, if not only, patch of common ground: concern about the options available to pregnant students. They joined forces to sponsor a campus forum on Feb. 19 about the services Vanderbilt provides.

Women's Resource Center is making a difference
Begun in 1977, the Women's Resource Center of the New River Valley is the oldest shelter operation in the state.
Pat Brown, the center's director for the past 17 years, said its history goes back to a program called Community Action that opened in Christiansburg in 1965 as a way of dealing with poverty issues confronting local residents

Hispanic women join forces to improve their lives
Groups are springing up across Austin to help the city's booming population of Hispanic families -- particularly women and children.
One such group is Latina Mami.
The founder, 27-year-old Gloria Perez-Walker, says she started the nonprofit group four years ago to assist Hispanic women with everything from English classes to play groups.

Khaled Al Maeena: Empowering women
A few days ago, I read about the burning down of six girls' schools in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, NWFP. The province is described by many in Pakistan as a very conservative area. I also read of demonstrations elsewhere which opposed giving women their civil rights.

In the February 23 issue of Time magazine, the cover story is titled "Arab Women Rising." The article concerns the optimistic and ambitious new generation of Arab women who are speaking openly and slowly re-shaping Arab society.

Young Women Expand Their Horizons
What should I be when I grow up? It's a question that most middle school students haven't found an answer for, but thanks to the American Association for University Women, these young women know they have options

Girls get an introduction to engineering
National engineering organizations say there's a gender gap; men outnumber women in university engineering schools by an average five-to-one.
One organization is trying to close the gap by giving one group of students an early start in science.
Several young women are hard at work making catapults out of spoons and unsinkable ships out of tin foil. Their inventions aren't for school or the science fair -- they're just for fun.

WOMEN WAGE WAR ON WEENIE WAGGERS
Weenie Waggers. Guys who get off on indecent exposure. As a young girl, I had many an unwanted dick thrust upon my naked eyes, and I was scared. These men chose spots that were isolated, they waited until there was no one else around, they were intimidating and scary, it was verging on rape and you could not tell if you were ABOUT to be raped if you did not get out of there fast. It definitely is more than nudity. I am fine with nakedness and nudity. This is something else. And it is not sexual either. I seriously doubt these men EVER get a reaction of "ooh, neat, can we have sex?" from the women these men assault. This is a power move by men on women. Plain and simple. And it is the kind of power move that reinforces a Patriarchy. So it must come down NOW!

« grrrly news 2/21 | whb homepage | feminine endings »

your comments : post a new comment