riotfeminism

oh just throw me off a bridge

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:13:38 GMT

NY Times Calls Heidi Montag a "Feminist Hero"

Will the power dynamic shift on The Hills?

"Defying our expectations," Heidi Montag "has emerged as a kind of feminist hero" in the new Hills season (airing tonight), a New York Times critic writes.

"Her groundswell of self-assertion begins when [beau Spencer Pratt] insists on eloping, prompting Heidi to declare, 'This isn't, like, Spencer's relationship and you decide what we do,'" critic Ginia Bellafante says.

"The full-on joyous Oprah-fication of Heidi culminates with the show's return and gives The Hills a new momentum," she writes. "After taking a break from Spencer at her parents' modest house in Crested Butte, Colorado, Heidi returns to Los Angeles to kick him out and chastises him for taking her flat-screen TV with him." (The happy pair celebrated Easter Sunday together.)

Meanwhile, Lauren Conrad, who spends her screen time "pining for [Brody Jenner], who, she has confessed, never makes her feel good enough... could learn from Heidi right now," Bellafante writes.

Conrad – who told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm sure a lot of people don't take me seriously" – is the cover subject of the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.

Lady Troubles

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:39:04 GMT

hahah thats great

Are Women Funny???

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:36:31 GMT

Why Women Aren't Funny

What makes the female so much deadlier than the male? With assists from Fran Lebowitz, Nora Ephron, and a recent Stanford-medical-school study, the author investigates the reasons for the humor gap.

by Christopher Hitchens January 2007

From the John Springer Collection/Corbis.

Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: "He's really quite cute, and he's kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he's so funny … " (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, "Funny? He wouldn't know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.") However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: "She's a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make 'em laugh."

Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.

All right—try it the other way (as the bishop said to the barmaid). Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.

Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift. Indeed, we now have all the joy of a scientific study, which illuminates the difference. At the Stanford University School of Medicine (a place, as it happens, where I once underwent an absolutely hilarious procedure with a sigmoidoscope), the grim-faced researchers showed 10 men and 10 women a sample of 70 black-and-white cartoons and got them to rate the gags on a "funniness scale." To annex for a moment the fall-about language of the report as it was summarized in Biotech Week:

The researchers found that men and women share much of the same humor-response system; both use to a similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens … which is part of the mesolimbic reward center.

This has all the charm and address of the learned Professor Scully's attempt to define a smile, as cited by Richard Usborne in his treatise on P. G. Wodehouse: "the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth; the curving of the naso-labial furrows … " But have no fear—it gets worse:

"Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," said the report's author, Dr. Allan Reiss. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more pleased about it." The report also found that "women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny."

Slower to get it, more pleased when they do, and swift to locate the unfunny—for this we need the Stanford University School of Medicine? And remember, this is women when confronted with humor. Is it any wonder that they are backward in generating it?

This is not to say that women are humorless, or cannot make great wits and comedians. And if they did not operate on the humor wavelength, there would be scant point in half killing oneself in the attempt to make them writhe and scream (uproariously). Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence. Men will laugh at almost anything, often precisely because it is—or they are—extremely stupid. Women aren't like that. And the wits and comics among them are formidable beyond compare: Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, Fran Lebowitz, Ellen DeGeneres. (Though ask yourself, was Dorothy Parker ever really funny?) Greatly daring—or so I thought—I resolved to call up Ms. Lebowitz and Ms. Ephron to try out my theories. Fran responded: "The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?" Ms. Ephron did not disagree. She did, however, in what I thought was a slightly feline way, accuse me of plagiarizing a rant by Jerry Lewis that said much the same thing. (I have only once seen Lewis in action, in The King of Comedy, where it was really Sandra Bernhard who was funny.)

In any case, my argument doesn't say that there are no decent women comedians. There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three. When Roseanne stands up and tells biker jokes and invites people who don't dig her shtick to suck her dick—know what I am saying? And the Sapphic faction may have its own reasons for wanting what I want—the sweet surrender of female laughter. While Jewish humor, boiling as it is with angst and self-deprecation, is almost masculine by definition.

read the rest here. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701

this article was the inspiration for this months epic cover.

Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?

The idea that women aren’t funny—and which male said that?—seems pretty laughable these days. TV has unleashed a new generation of comediennes, who act, perform stand-up, write, and direct—dishing out the jokes with a side of sexy. Annie Leibovitz photographs a dozen of the wittiest dames in showbiz, from 30 Rock’s Tina Fey to Sarah Silverman, to S.N.L.’s current stars, while the author learns why the setup has changed.

by Alessandra Stanley April 2008

Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Tina Fey. “You still hear” people say women aren’t funny, Fey comments. “It’s just a lot easier to ignore.” Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; styled by Michael Roberts.

There are people who lament that no women now are as funny as Carole Lombard or Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedies of Lubitsch, Sturges, and Hawks. They are missing the point: today’s comediennes are on television, where they are often responsible for their own material. Tina Fey, for instance. The former head writer of Saturday Night Live, who wrote the film Mean Girls before creating the sitcom 30 Rock, is one of the leading voices in a new generation of comediennes—women who not only play comic roles but also perform stand-up and write and direct comedy.

Lombard and Stanwyck were great comic actresses on-screen, but they had about as much to do with the joke writing as Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox did on Friends. Off-camera Lucille Ball was about as funny as lead. 30 Rock is often compared to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but James L. Brooks created and wrote that classic sitcom with Allan Burns; Moore and the rest of the cast were talented actors, not comedians. There were always exceptions, sui generis performers such as Mae West and Gracie Allen and Carol Burnett. The difference now is that funny is closer to the norm for women.

“There is no question that there are a million more funny women than there used to be,” says Nora Ephron, the writer and film director. “But everything has more women. There are more women in a whole bunch of places, and this is one of them.” Ephron knows exactly why female comedians are currently much more successful than they used to be. “Here’s the answer to any question: cable,” she says. “There are so many hours to fill, and they ran out of men, so then there were women.”

The humor of women has been a sensitive topic ever since the first one cracked a joke. (In Genesis, Sarah, pregnant long past her childbearing years, says her son is named Isaac, Hebrew for “laughter,” because it’s funny she would have a child at her age.) Throughout time, prominent, deeply serious men have argued that women have no sense of humor. Shakespeare didn’t agree, and the 19th-century English novelist George Meredith suggested that without the tempering wit of women there could be no real comedy at all. His examples were the Middle East and Germany. (“The German literary laugh, like the timed awakenings of their Barbarossa in the hollows of the Untersberg, is infrequent, and rather monstrous,” Meredith wrote, “never a laugh of men and women in concert.”)

But the suffragette movement must have taken a toll on the male ego: by the late 19th century the humorlessness of women was a staple of club toasts and magazines such as Punch. Jerry Lewis picked it up again in earnest in 2000, telling an audience at a comedy festival, “I don’t like any female comedians.” When Martin Short, also onstage, said that he surely must have liked Lucille Ball, Lewis flatly replied, “No.” (Lewis later softened his assessment on Larry King Live but not by much.)

Web special: Frank DiGiacomo and Jim Windolf interview today’s queens of comedy for VF.com.

Video! Behind the scenes of Annie Leibovitz’s shoot.

And the question was recently reopened in this magazine: the polymorphously polemic Christopher Hitchens argued that, in general, women are not funny, and certainly not as funny as men. “For some reason,” he wrote, “women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing, which is why we admire Lucille Ball and Helen Fielding, who do see the funny side of it. But this is so rare as to be like Dr. Johnson’s comparison of a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs: the surprise is that it is done at all” (“Why Women Aren’t Funny,” January 2007).

Dissecting the nature of women’s humor, or supposed lack thereof, is a joyless and increasingly moot subject, but it boils down to the point Virginia Woolf argued in her essay about Shakespeare’s sister in A Room of One’s Own, and it’s analogous to the case Larry Summers made so clumsily with regard to women in the sciences that it cost him his job as president of Harvard: namely, that society has different expectations for women. Summers sealed his fate by also suggesting that women’s innate aptitude for science and math might be weaker. The nature-versus-nurture argument also extends to humor. It’s a shame that Margaret Mead never made it to that tribe in Papua New Guinea where women tell the jokes, and men pretend to find them funny.

Certainly, the rewards of wit are not nearly as ample for women as for men, and sometimes funny women are actually penalized. Not everything has changed since 1885, when educator Kate Sanborn tried to refute the conventional male wisdom in her book The Wit of Women. Sanborn pointed out that women have good reason to keep their one-liners to themselves. “No man likes to have his story capped by a better and fresher from a lady’s lips,” she wrote. “What woman does not risk being called sarcastic and hateful if she throws the merry dart or engages in a little sharp-shooting. No, no, it’s dangerous—if not fatal.”

Or as Joan Rivers puts it, “Men find funny women threatening. They ask me, ‘Are you going to be funny in bed?’ ”

It used to be that women were not funny. Then they couldn’t be funny if they were pretty. Now a female comedian has to be pretty—even sexy—to get a laugh.

At least, that’s one way to view the trajectory from Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett to Tina Fey. Some say it’s the natural evolution of the women’s movement; others argue it’s a devolution. But the funniest women on television are youthful, good-looking, and even, in a few cases, close to beautiful—the kind of women who in past decades might have been the butt of a stand-up comic’s jokes.

And it doesn’t help to point out that Lucille Ball began her Hollywood career as a model and starlet or that Elaine May was—and still is—fetching. Onstage and even on-camera, funny women in the old days didn’t try to look their best; they tried to look comical. Lucille Ball would wear almost anything—Carmen Miranda dresses, muumuus, and crazy hats—to transform herself into the childish and braying Lucy Ricardo. When Phyllis Diller stripped off her false lashes and cotton-candy wigs, she actually looked attractive. Nowadays, Fey cultivates a “sexy librarian” look on 30 Rock, with foxy glasses and décolletage that slyly defies the show’s premise that her character, Liz Lemon, is a homely nebbish.

In her stand-up act and on her show on Comedy Central, The Sarah Silverman Program, Sarah Silverman is as crude and cruelly insensitive as any male comedian, but with a sexy, coquettish undertone—a Valley Village version of Brenda Patimkin, the Jewish-American Princess in Goodbye, Columbus. In one scene, Sarah calls her sister “gay,” then apologizes to her two gay neighbors. “I don’t mean gay like homosexual,” she says sweetly. “I mean gay like retarded.”

read the rest here. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/04/funnygirls200804

Happy International Womens day! y'all.

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:28:30 GMT

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Women are stupid. Says one woman....

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:31:53 GMT

We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?

By Charlotte Allen
Sunday, March 2, 2008; B01

Here's Agence France-Presse reporting on a rally for Sen. Barack Obama at the University of Maryland on Feb. 11: "He did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of 'I love you, Obama!' with a reassuring 'I love you back.' " Women screamed? What was this, the Beatles tour of 1964? And when they weren't screaming, the fair-sex Obama fans who dominated the rally of 16,000 were saying things like: "Every time I hear him speak, I become more hopeful." Huh?

"Women 'Falling for Obama,' " the story's headline read. Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

I'm not the only woman who's dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us. It's a frequent topic of lunch, phone and water-cooler conversations; even some feminists can't believe that there's this thing called "The Oprah Winfrey Show" or that Celine Dion actually sells CDs. A female friend of mine plans to write a horror novel titled "Office of Women," in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox.

We exaggerate, of course. And obviously men do dumb things, too, although my husband has perfectly good explanations for why he eats standing up at the stove (when I'm not around) or pulls down all the blinds so the house looks like a cave (also when I'm not around): It has to do with the aggressive male nature and an instinctive fear of danger from other aggressive men. When men do dumb things, though, they tend to be catastrophically dumb, such as blowing the paycheck on booze or much, much worse (think "postal"). Women's foolishness is usually harmless. But it can be so . . . embarrassing.

Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex. As far as I'm concerned, she has proved that she can't debate -- viz. her televised one-on-one against Obama last Tuesday, which consisted largely of complaining that she had to answer questions first and putting the audience to sleep with minutiae about her health-coverage mandate. She has whined (via her aides) like the teacher's pet in grade school that the boys are ganging up on her when she's bested by male rivals. She has wept on the campaign trail, even though everyone knows that tears are the last refuge of losers. And she is tellingly dependent on her husband.

Then there's Clinton's nearly all-female staff, chosen for loyalty rather than, say, brains or political savvy. Clinton finally fired her daytime-soap-watching, self-styled "Latina queena" campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, known for burning through campaign money and for her open contempt for the "white boys" in the Clinton camp. But stupidly, she did it just in time to alienate the Hispanic voters she now desperately needs to win in Texas or Ohio to have any shot at the Democratic nomination.

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Here's the book's autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn't pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that's the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by -- get this -- picking up a Latin lover!

This is the kind of literature that countless women soak up like biscotti in a latte cup: food, clothes, sex, "relationships" and gummy, feel-good "spirituality." This female taste for first-person romantic nuttiness, spiced with a soupÂ¿on of soft-core porn, has made for centuries of bestsellers -- including Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel "Pamela," in which a handsome young lord tries to seduce a virtuous serving maid for hundreds of pages and then proposes, as well as Erica Jong's 1973 "Fear of Flying."

Then there's the chick doctor television show "Grey's Anatomy" (reportedly one of Hillary Clinton's favorites). Want to be a surgeon? Here's what your life will be like at the hospital, according to "Grey's": sex in the linen-supply room, catfights with your sister in front of the patients, sex in the on-call room, a "prom" in the recovery room so you can wear your strapless evening gown to work, and sex with the married attending physician in an office. Oh, and some surgery. When was the last time you were in a hospital and spotted two doctors going at it in an empty bed?

I swear no man watches "Grey's Anatomy" unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of "The Friday Night Knitting Club." No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either -- although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn't some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat.

Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

The theory that women are the dumber sex -- or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents -- is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men's and women's brains not only look different, but men's brains are bigger than women's (even adjusting for men's generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy. While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can't add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don't even know how many pairs of shoes I own. I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men. (An evolutionary just-so story explains this facility of ours: Back in hunter-gatherer days, men were the hunters and needed to calculate spear trajectories, while women were the gatherers and needed to remember where the berries were.) I don't mind recognizing and accepting that the women in history I admire most -- Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth I, George Eliot, Margaret Thatcher -- were brilliant outliers.

The same goes for female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons. Yes, they can do their jobs and do them well, and I don't think anyone should put obstacles in their paths. I predict that over the long run, however, even with all the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide, the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason.

So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

Are you fucking kidding!???!!!?

i am writing to the editor, this has really angered me. you can write too.
letters@washpost.com

Douchebag

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:29:44 GMT

A 27 year old man in sweden crushed up an abortian inducing pill into his girlfriends yogurt after she annoced that she was pregnent and wanted to keep it. He didnt want the baby.
My question is this, why did this guy think this was a good idea?? She ended up getting an abortion becuase the pill had damaged the fetus.

for the full story,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23358791/?GT1=10856

clowns

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:20:38 GMT

There is this clown at work. He is so sexiest. He spends his time making fun of me and another girl. This Bafoon thinks he is so cleaver. Well, He isn't. i am so tired of his stories about how he "does every chick he comes arcoss".Yeah, I bet thats true. He is ugly & obnoixious. I am so tired of him laughing at me becuase i am a women. He also finds amusement in telling me that i am ugly.
Oh yeah, If i am so ugly then why do you Booty Call me all the time? In your dreams pal.

The Littleest Winslow

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:14:10 GMT

http://thelittlestwinslow.wordpress.com/

seriously, amazing. go read it!

Bitch is The New Black

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:13:18 GMT

Peta

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:57:50 GMT

oh thats hilarious. not. anyways, i really hate PETA. I really hate them. I don't understand why they spend so much money making fun of celebrities and naked advertisements. Yes, its good to get the word out about your cause, but i have a hard time believeing that they do much besides make a ruckous. Maybe they should focus more on saving animals then scaring children (Peta2.org is enough to make you have nightmares for weeks)
Scare tactics may work to get somepeople to change views on things. But Peta2 is aimed at children, and the videos and pictures are unnessary. They are too upseting for children to view. Peta2 should be more kidfriendly.
Besides upsetting young people they seem to be so sexist.
i want Peta gone.

From Yahoo:

Ravi Chand of Virginia and Bethany Walker of Ohio kissing on a Boise sidewalk on Friday, July 23, 2004 in Boise, Idaho to promote vegetarian eating. The 'Live Make-Out Tour', sponsored by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), is being staged throughout the country to demonstrate PETA's claims that vegetarians are better lovers.
And this is supposed to reinforce the seriousness of the issue, right?

and.....

http://petakillsanimals.com/

...oh really?

once a year? i'd like that!

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:36:54 GMT

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:55:45 GMT

Female Fronted Bands Deserve More Play

6 hours, 23 minutes ago6 hours, 23 minutes ago6 hours, 23 minutes ago6 hours, 23 minutes ago6 hours, 23 minutes ago By Chelsea - Musicians Institute

Lead singers in rock bands always tend to be the “hot ones.” The one the chicks salivate over, throw dirty bras on stage for, and reserve their eggs for, specifically for some drunken-groupie evening in the back of a stuffy, smoke filled tour bus.

Lead singers scribble their names on pieces of flesh, deflower virgins, and tally threesomes on the frets of their guitars.

For the lead singer, it’s a pretty sweet life (minus the hightened risk of a flaming case of herpes).

Now, do the same rules apply when you’re a chick lead? Do men send flowers, or throw baseball caps on stage? Do they wave their balls around for women to sign with a Sharpie?! Or is it just women that act that ridiculous?

It seems to me that female fronted bands would be intimidating, since any chick who can hang with the likes of Aerosmith, Guns ‘n Roses, and current crazies like Panic at the Disco and all of those, “boy bands with thicker eyeliner than me” type groups would have to be: bad ass.

I feel it’s time to salute the women who can “hang”, who have possibly signed a scrote (or two), who have rocked the mic, and who have been “hot lead singers”. Even if we don’t give them the appropriate title, it is necessary we give them an “ode”:

Female Lead Bad Asses:

Debbie Harry from Blondie- best song, “Heart of Glass”
Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders- best song, “I’ll stand by you”
Shirley Manson from Garbage- best song, “shut your mouth”
Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs-best song, “Maps”
Nina Persson from The Cardigans- best song, “My favourite game”
Hayley Williams from Paramore- best song, “We Are Broken”
Beth Gibbons from Portishead- best song, “Sour Times”
Jenny Lewis from Rilo Kiley- best song, “Portions For Foxes”
Becki Pipette from The Pipettes- best song, “Sex”
Juliette Lewis from Juliette and The Licks- best song, “Mind Full of Daggers”
Alison Goldfrapp from Goldfrapp- best song, “Fly Me Away”
The Pierce Sisters from The Pierces- best song, “Lights On”
…and though this is somewhat out of left field:
Nicole Scherzinger from The Pussycat Dolls- best song, “Buttons”

These women are talented, full of spice and vinegar, and most importantly, hot. Got any additions? Let us know!

collegecandy.com

she unfortunatly missed some important ones...gwen stefani, courtney love, louise post, kathleen hanna, ect...

none the less its a great blog.

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:49:51 GMT

10 simple ideas to empower women

As a woman, here are some simple tips and how men can help.

Value yourself, and relationships where you are an equal.
In any relationship, there is going to be give-and-take as situations and circumstances change, but you should also feel that, overall, your value in the partnership is equal to that of your partner's.

Learn how to own your voice and assert your opinions.
Pay attention to how women have been socialized to defer to men in conversations. For all you men, avoid interrupting, talking over, discrediting or dismissing a woman's opinion. Studies show that women are more frequently interrupted than men. Over the course of many conversations, they get the message that what they have to say is not necessarily as compelling or valued as what men have to say.

Identify words and language that communicate gender bias.
Make an effort to consciously change the language so it draws attention to areas where bias is apparent. Two places to look for gender bias include position titles that infer gender and school/employer policies that infer gender.

Speak up about sexist jokes or sexist images.
Promote sexual harassment policies in your workplace.

Focus on the person instead appearance.
To foster a healthier self-image, compliment yourself or other woman for achievements, thoughts, and actions.

Call attention to media deception.
Expose and understand unrealistic media images for what they are: retouched, computer-manipulated photos of models-a group that makes up only a tiny subset of the population.

Learn how to ask and negotiate for wages and raises.
Know the worth of your job. Education is your best defense. Research everything you can think of to find the competitive salary for your job in your region -- employment surveys, libraries, professional organizations, peers. For a raise, you need evidence to show your boss that you deserve it. One way to document your contribution to your company is to keep a job diary. Every week, or even every day, write down what you did and how it helped meet the company's objectives. Keep lists or spreadsheets, because managers like to count things. Remember that attributes such as positive attitude, willingness to put in overtime, and quality of work, are essential. Include a few good stories about your work in the diary to illustrate what you added.

Think about, plan and prepare for career advancement.
Mentors are a great asset. If your company doesn't offer clear career ladders, research or find a seminar to help you understand your industry and opportunities.

Encourage risk taking.
People develop self-reliance when they're given the space to solve problems and make mistakes in the process.

Know and be able to manage your finances.
Start saving for retirement immediately in a career - it will grow to much more than the same amount if you wait 10 years to start saving. And keep saving - Social Security doesn't provide the equivalent of a "living wage" for retirement years. Women statistically live about six years longer than men, and run a higher risk of living in poverty as they get older.

Playboy

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 05:31:38 GMT

Flagship Magazine, Playboy, reports losses of $1.1 million, $3 cents per share. A year earlier, the international television and other business affiliates gained a net profit of 3.7 million, 11 cents per share. Revenue slipped from $86.2 million to 85.9 million.

Many critics believe Playboy has outlived her era and needs to say good bye. Others believe all Hef and Playboy need is an Image and Operations Overhaul… and begin moving with the “New Media” industry.

Read Full Article (SOURCE)

i personally love Playboy.I think its empowering for women becuase its not degrading, its a celebration. Hugh Hefner never wanted to sell a sex toy he wanted to celebrate the beauty of women. That explains why Playboy never went hard core. Playboy and Pornography in general has always been a touchy subject for feminists, but there are always two sides and Isupport women in the sex indrustry as long as its what they want to do. For some women a job in the sex indrustry is as good as a corporate job at a huge company, It all depends on your taste. My feeling are that you should always support someones decision as long as it is there passion.

lol.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:27:43 GMT

Through advertising, Tom Ford continues to inform heterosexual men that he doesn't want them buying his products.

(click ads for closer look)
Previously, Tom Ford literally cock-blocked salivating troglodytes by placing a bottle of his men's fragrance over a woman's shaved nether regions. The ad had a strong underlying message to hetero men: 'My cologne will make you smell like a vagina.'
This time, he again uses crotch-messaging to dissuade straight men from buying his stylish offerings. The above ad says, 'If you wear Tom Ford clothing to a party, naked women will viciously grab and twist your cock until you shout out in pain.' Look at the expression on the woman's face; she is not "turned on." She is pissed off. Also, to further insult us pussy pumpers, Ford cast a dashing gay model to play a "metrosexual" straight man (note the insulting flavored beer). And, of course, the main reason I know Tom Ford doesn't want us heteros purchasing his products is that he placed the ad in Details magazine. Duh. Update: as I supposed with Ford's vagina ad, a reader has brought up the possibility that the woman is not a "woman." Previous naked ass in a fashion ad: Kate Moss's NoHo Ass. Previous hot man in a fashion ad: auto repairs by A/X underwear model Clint Mauro. related: DEEP THINK—the posing of male fashion models.

Mrs. Obama

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:18:58 GMT

The Deal With Michelle Obama

February 22, 2008 - 1:30 pm,February 22, 2008 - 1:30 pm,February 22, 2008 - 1:30 pm, By Elizabeth - Baruch College

With everyone making such a fuss over Hillary Clinton’s spouse in regard to her shot at being the man of the house; it only seems fair to me that Michelle Obama be dragged out to the boxing ring and forced to show us what she is made of, too.

Through a complication that seems to be either really good or really bad for Hillary at all times…her husband was president. Therefore, we likely already have an established opinion of him. And, by default, unfortunately, many people will not be voting for Hillary simply because of their views of Bill.

So if we are going to put such a heavy emphasis on the spouses of the candidates, we should all know a lot more about Michelle.

HER HISTORY

Michelle is American. She was raised in Chicago and went on to study at Princeton University and then attended Harvard Law School. She went back to Chicago to work as a lawyer when she completed her education.

Okay. So far, so good. The chic is smart. She even skipped second grade.

HOW’D THEY HOOK UP?

Michelle and Barack both stood out at the law firm where they were working in Chicago. They were the only African Americans at the firm. She was initially mentoring HIM when they met. So if you’ve got any questions as to whether or not Barack takes advice from Michelle…I think that’s pretty evident considering that their relationship has been built on that atmosphere.

WHAT IS SHE LIKE?

Well, clearly, she’s very intelligent. She speaks eloquently, but there is no questioning her sense of humor. In fact, Michelle was being so sarcastic in the beginning of Barack’s campaign that she had to tone it down due to the fact that picking up on sarcasm requires a portion of a brain…and not everyone in this country has that.

The good news is that she seems pretty sound, reasonable, and passionate about the future of this country. The bad news is that a candidate is always campaigning with their spouse, and god bless the hearts of those who are single and aspire for a career in politics.

There has always been this unsafe stigma attached to the concept of a politician NOT attached romantically. Thus far, this country has seen only one bachelor president: James Buchanan.

Do we ever simply vote for the candidate him or herself? Also, what do YOU think of Michelle? We all know what Mr. O’Reilly thinks of her, and some people are even comparing her with Jackie O…

www.collegecandy.com

LIndsay Lohan

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:15:10 GMT

Lindsay Lohan strips for "The Last Sitting"
Surely, you've heard: Lindsay Lohan has publicly exposed her body for the first time (except for, um, that chest-'n'-cooter flashing phase) in a New York magazine remake of Marilyn Monroe's infamous photo series, "The Last Sitting." Photographer Bert Stern re-created the iconic photos he took 46 years ago during three booze-filled days at the Hotel Bel-Air. Things were slightly different this time: The one-on-one intimacy of the original shoot was updated with a protective Hollywood entourage; Monroe's airy locks were poorly duplicated by a straw-blond wig; and, presumably, the 78-year-old didn't have designs to sleep with his muse this time around. Some things, though, remained the same: Lohan playfully and seductively rolls amid white sheets and exposes her breasts again and again (and again!) behind a series of sheer scarves.

But far more interesting than the photos -- which you may or may not be able to access, as the site's server has been overloaded -- is what inspired Lohan to officially reveal her private bits for the camera. The thrice-rehabbed starlet says she simply couldn't turn down the opportunity to re-create the final photographic romp before Monroe overdosed on barbiturates; she felt being asked to participate was in itself "really an honor." This requires repeating: The rehab veteran felt honored to re-create the final booze-fueled photo shoot that came just six weeks before Monroe died from a drug overdose. In fact, Lohan idolizes the late icon; she has filled her house with Monroe memorabilia -- including a painting showing a tipped-over "bottle of pills next to her" -- and even purchased an apartment where the star once lived.

For her part, Lohan frames the shoot as a way to revolt against the soul-grinding Hollywood machine. She tells New York that both Monroe and the recently deceased Heath Ledger are "prime examples of what this industry can do to someone" and argues -- much as she might deconstruct the Hollywood cooter cabaret of 2006 -- that Monroe's decision to disrobe was subversive. "She's saying, 'Look, you've taken a lot from me, so why don't I give it to you myself,'" Lohan says. "She's taking control back." Except, there is no self-protection, no real reclamation of personal power there; enthusiastically objectifying oneself seems only to satisfy and confirm the public's total ownership of female celebrities.

The New York piece exalts how Stern's original photo series preserved the "poignant humanity of the real woman -- beautiful, but also fragile, needy, flawed -- from the monumental sex symbol." But what, I ask, is the difference? They are one and the same. Ultimately, "The Last Sitting" didn't dampen Monroe's sex symbol flame, but fanned it; Stern's series of photographs are part and parcel to Monroe's ultimate legacy and symbolism. Then there came this line, which almost caused me to spew coffee across my keyboard: "In our armored, airbrushed age, his [original] achievement feels almost revolutionary." At the time it was revolutionary, sure, but now it's simply par for the paparazzi course.

As Jessica Valenti wrote this week on Feministing, "This spread fetishizes the death and downfall of women in the public eye." That Lohan, angrily as it may be, embraces the public's smothering interest in sex symbols in all their "fragile, needy, flawed" glory seems a symptom of the increasingly common sex-symbol Stockholm syndrome.

single & childless

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:08:07 GMT

Single and childless woman in your 30s, listen up. While tending to your 12 cats, freezing your eggs, desperately scanning Match.com profiles and polishing off that pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby, you're also, according to a new report, doing more unpaid work than your wedded stroller-pushing rivals! Well, at least that's the imagery evoked by much of the media coverage of the report. In a headline, the Telegraph trumpets, "'Bridget Jones's' do the most unpaid overtime," and the Daily Mail runs with a photograph of a business woman yapping on the phone with the caption "single sorrow."

This hysteria was sparked by a report released Friday by Britain's Trades Union Congress finding that single, childless women in their 30s are more likely than mothers, fathers and childless men to do unpaid overtime work. Among childless women, 24.2 percent work unpaid overtime, averaging 7.4 hours a week; 17 percent of mothers put in unpaid overtime, averaging 5.7 hours. Interestingly enough, men who do put in unpaid hours clock the most overtime on average; fathers put in an average of 8.3 hours, compared with 7.4 hours for single men.

Kat Banyard of the Fawcett Society, a women's rights organization, points out that these statistics represent that familiar child-or-career choice facing women. She hits the nail right on the head: "They are forced to choose between caring for a family at home or maximizing their career opportunities in a workplace that measures performance by the number of hours put in."

we is gonna talk about ladies

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:45:36 GMT

What is....

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:42:08 GMT

Everything you read about womans rights makes more sence if you know the history. Alot of my posts are about EC& abortion, so its important to know about Roe Vs. Wade. Believe or not this movement is actaully in jeopardy now. Pro-Life groups (against abortion) are trying to get this overturned. I find this suprising becuase we are in 2008, not 1908. Lets get with the times. The more options you have the better your life will be.

Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade, case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. The decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun and based on the residual right of privacy, struck down dozens of state antiabortion statutes. The decision was based on two cases, that of an unmarried woman from Texas, where abortion was illegal unless the mother's life was at risk, and that of a poor, married mother of three from Georgia, where state law required permission for an abortion from a panel of doctors and hospital officials. While establishing the right to an abortion, this decision gave states the right to intervene in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy to protect the woman and the “potential” life of the unborn child. Denounced by the National Council of Bishops, the decision gave rise to a vocal antiabortion movement that put pressure on the courts and created an anti-Roe litmus test for the judicial appointments of the Reagan and Bush administrations (1981–93). In a 1989 case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the court, while not striking down Roe, limited its scope, permitting states greater latitude in regulating and restricting abortions. Then in 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the abortion rights granted in Roe v. Wade, while permitting further restrictions.

What you can do with a degree in women’s studies.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:37:55 GMT

Transform The World

by Nikki Anyanna Stewart

a) Become the first woman president of Harvard University
b) Win a Rhodes Scholarship to study sexual civil rights
c) Advocate for domestic-violence survivors while starring on TV’s Survivor
d) Teach the next generation
e) All of the above, and more

It's a typical question from parents, fellow students and even faculty: What can you do with your college degree? In an era of conservative impediments to progressive liberal arts education, a field such as women’s studies seems a particularly common target for that query.

Recently, we have had at least one excellent role model to point to: Drew Gilpin Faust, the first woman president of Harvard. She may have earned her Ph.D. in American civilization, but she was formerly chair of the women’s studies program at the University of Pennsylvania and founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Under her leadership, Radcliffe—Harvard’s former women’s college—has become an interdisciplinary research center supporting “transformative works,” with a special commitment to studying women, gender and society. In a simlar fashion, many women’s studies majors tend to intermix their fields of concentration in order to craft distinctive careers aimed at transforming our world.

How many women’s studies grads are we talking about? According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the 2003–2004 academic year U.S. institutions of higher education granted 1,024 bachelor’s degrees, 135 master’s degrees and five doctoral degrees in women’s studies. These statistics, however, are suspect, given that the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has documented 750 active undergraduate and graduate women’s studies programs in U.S. colleges and universities.

“It is very difficult to get a picture of women’s studies as a field,” says Allison Kimmich, executive director of the NWSA and a Ph.D. in women’s studies from Emory University, “particularly the number of graduates now out in the workforce and the kinds of career paths those graduates have taken. Women’s studies has not historically collected that data on itself.” A clearer picture of women’s studies programs should begin to emerge, however, as NWSA has embarked on a Ford Foundation-funded project to map women’s and gender studies in the U.S. In the future, the association hopes to collect data on graduates’ career paths.

Earlier studies of women’s studies graduates, such as that by Barbara F. Luebke and Mary Ellen Reilly in their 1995 book, Women’s Studies Graduates: The First Generation (Teachers College Press), were similarly concerned with documenting the value of such degrees. They found that the fact that women’s studies majors and graduates were persistently asked what could be done with their degrees reflected a continuing ignorance about women’s studies as an academic discipline. In their study, Luebke and Reilly were also able to document a unique set of skills learned through women’s studies programs: empowerment, self-confidence, critical thinking, building community, and understanding differences and intersections among racism, homophobia, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-Semitism and other types of oppression.

Moya Bailey, a B.A. in comparative women’s studies at Spelman College (the first historically black U.S. college to offer a women’s studies major) and now a Ph.D. student in women’s studies at Emory University, has already been able to use some of her women’s studies skills in community action. While at Spelman, Bailey participated in “The Nelly Protest,” a nationally publicized demonstration against misogyny in hip-hop music and videos.

That and other protest actions were so meaningful to her that, as a doctoral student at Emory, she has studied how “intentional communi-ties”— like the nurturing spaces often created by women’s studies programs— assist marginalized groups to develop much-needed critical and political perspectives. Within 10 years, she hopes to be teaching women’s studies at a historically black college or university, “adding gender, class and sexuality as important pieces of the conversation within an African American community context.”

Similarly, Harvard undergraduate Ryan Thoreson hopes to develop a career focused on the intersection of multiple concerns. As a dual major in government and women/gender/sexuality studies, Thoreson believes that women’s studies will enrich his planned practice of international sexual civil-rights law. “In my government courses I learned about political theory, but I found the political theory I learned in my women’s studies curriculum to be much more broadly applicable,” says Thoreson, a Rhodes Scholarship winner. “If I had only majored in government, I would not come to legal and policy questions as thoughtfully, wanting to understand the social and cultural context of groups affected by the law.”

Maria Bevacqua, associate professor and chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato, believes that women’s studies has carved out a niche in the area of applied theory and practice. Like many programs, Mankato’s women’s studies curriculum includes internships in feminist organizations and collective action projects for course credit. Bevacqua —who has her own women’s studies Ph.D. from Emory—has seen her program’s graduates do everything from working in human service agencies to opening feminist businesses. Moreover, women’s studies graduates act as “ambassadors of feminism, bringing the women’s studies perspective into the rest of the world.”

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, founding di-rector of the Women’s Research and Resource Center and professor of women’s studies at Spelman, has increasingly seen students take women’s studies into the public sphere. “In the early years, women’s studies graduates tended to work on gender-specific issues, getting jobs in battered-women’s shelters and rape crisis centers,” she says. “But more and more we have students going into public health, international policy, journalism, electoral politics, film-making, K-12 education and other careers that allow them to effect large-scale change.”

Guy-Sheftall has also seen students increasingly desire to be public intellectuals and media producers, so much so that Spelman has incorporated digital media production into its women’s studies curriculum. “I think we are going to see many more women’s studies graduates going into film and television, and many of our students already produce documentaries— even if they choose to do something else as a career.”

Deborah Siegel, author of the forth-coming book Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, has noticed the same thing. She observes that in the 1970s, “women’s studies was about bridging the divide between scholarship and activism. This current generation is bridging scholarship, activism and media.”

Becky Lee is representative of this new generation. After acquiring a B.A. in women’s studies from the University of Michigan in 2000, Lee went on to law school and then worked as an advocate for domestic-violence survivors. While doing this work, she was approached to audition for the popular reality TV show Survivor. Thinking it could serve as a good platform for her cause, she joined the cast, and while she found that most of her statements on domestic violence got left on the editing floor, she has used the Survivor experience to expand her advocacy.

“I came in third and used my $75,000 prize to found a fund for domestic-violence prevention with a special focus on immigrant women from marginalized communities,” she says. “Now when I make public appearances for the show, I talk about the fund as a way to raise the issue of domestic violence for mainstream audiences.”

So what can you do with a degree in women’s studies? Perhaps transform enough minds through feminist education that this question is no longer asked

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:35:15 GMT

Paid Family Leave – It’s About Time

By Martha Burk

With all the partisan bickering in Washington in the past couple of weeks over the war, Scooter Libby’s non-punishment, and whether Harriet Meirs is entitled to claim executive privilege in the Justice Department scandal, the media has ignored one bit of bi-partisan cooperation that could mean a lot to working people, especially women.

Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Ted Stevens (R-AK) have introduced a bill to provide paid family leave for birth or adoption of a newborn, care of an elderly parent, or serious illness of the employee. It’s about time. The U.S. lags far behind most industrialized countries in granting this benefit to its workforce. According to researchers at Harvard and McGill Universities, 163 other countries guarantee paid maternal leave and 45 countries provide paid paternal leave. Additionally, 37 countries already ensure paid leave for the care of an ill child. By contrast, our present system grants only unpaid leave, and only to employees of large companies. Most can’t afford to take it. This legislation would help close that gap, and begin to bring the United States up to par with other industrialized nations.

Of course some will say that taxes in those countries are much higher than in the U.S., and what’s more, it smacks of socialism and government as big brother. True, our taxes are lower. But if you factor in the cost to families when a wage earner has to quit a job for reasons covered by the new bill, and the cost to companies of turnover and replacement when these employees leave, our present setup isn’t such a bargain after all. As for big brother, those same arguments were made when the United States first required public schools. Up until then, only the rich and well-connected could educate their kids. Hm-m-m, sort of like the present system on family leave – the rich can afford it on their own, and tough luck for ordinary workers.

The new Family Leave Insurance Act (FLIA) would create a giant insurance pool funded by employees and their companies. It would provide 8 weeks of paid leave in a twelve month period on a sliding scale. Folks at the bottom, making $20,000 a year or less, would get 100% wage replacement. Others would get replacements ranging from 75% down to 40% for higher wage workers ($60-$97,000 per year).

The best part is that it won’t cost anybody that much. Big corporations would pay an average of $6.12 per month per worker, matched by the employee. If the Halliburtons of the world can’t shell out $73.50 per year to grant some relief to their overstretched workers, maybe we ought to rethink the $21 billion in contracts they get from big brother government. Small companies wouldn’t be required to participate, but if they opted in, they and their workers would pay half the tab of the big guys -- only $3.06 per employee.

With an election year coming up and both Democrats and Republicans grandstanding on how much they care about families, you’d think support in the Senate would be darn near universal. No dice. So far, Dodd and Stevens have garnered exactly two other co-sponsors, Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), and Ted Kennedy (D-MA). The signatures of Senators on both sides of the aisle who could sign on to the new Family Leave bill are conspicuously absent.

Working women, by far the majority of voters in both parties, deserve better.

Washington

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:33:04 GMT

February 21, 2008

Washington Judge Rules against Access to Emergency Contraception

US District Court Judge Ronald Leighton ruled last week that pharmacists in the state of Washington can continue to refuse to sell emergency contraception (EC). Two Washington State Pharmacy Board rules issued last year require pharmacies to provide EC for all women. However, two pharmacists and a pharmacy owner filed a lawsuit against the rules in July, claiming that requiring pharmacies to dispense EC is a violation of civil rights, reports the Daily Women's Health Policy Report.

Last Friday, Judge Leighton denied the state Department of Health and the Board of Pharmacy's request to lift the injunction he had imposed after the lawsuit last year. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, pharmacists and pharmacies can continue to refuse to sell EC because of so-called "religious objections." Some pharmacists still refer to EC as an "abortive agent" even though research shows it will not affect a woman who is already pregnant.

The Seattle Times reports that the Washington Department of Health and the Board of Pharmacy argued that Judge Leighton’s injunction "broadly infringes" on the legal right of citizens to obtain plan B, "placing the public at greater risk of denial of access to care." NARAL Pro-Choice Washington released a report earlier this month that found 10 percent of pharmacies in Washington either do not carry EC or have a pharmacist who refuses to dispense it.

Karen Cooper, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, defended the Washington State Pharmacy Board rules saying, "Patient access to appropriate care should not be undermined by personal, non-medical judgments."

www.msmagazine.com

Yes, I discuss this alot. It is really important.

Denver

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:31:11 GMT

February 22, 2008

Denver Allows Anti-Abortion Groups to Apply for Protest Permits

Denver city officials announced on Wednesday that anti-abortion groups planning to protest the Democratic National Committee convention this summer can apply for permits beginning March 3. Several anti-abortion extremist groups threatened to sue the city in November over claims that the delays in permitting violated free speech rights.

The city cut 14 parks during the convention from those available for special permits during the Convention because security issues have yet to be finalized with Denver and the Secret Service. Denver city attorney David Fine said that the goal was to streamline the permitting process for protesters who want to demonstrate during the Democratic National Convention Aug. 25-28, according to Rocky Mountain News.

The anti-abortion groups have dropped their threat to sue for now. The groups involved in the threat included extremist group Operation Rescue, which circulated the citizen petitions that resulted in a Kansas grand jury investigation into Dr. George Tiller.

Media Resources: Rocky Mountain News 2/21/08; Daily Women’s Health Policy Report 2/22/08; Feminist Daily Newswire 11/6/07