Mr. J.S. Mill, in the year of our FSM 1869:

It is a political law of nature that those who are under any power of ancient origin, never begin by complaining of the power itself, but only of its oppressive exercise. There is never any want of women who complain of ill usage by their husbands. There would be infinitely more, if complaint were not the greatest of all provocatives to a repetition and increase of the ill usage. It is this which frustrates all attempts to maintain the power but protect the woman against its abuses. In no other case (except that of a child) is the person who has been proved judicially to have suffered an injury, replaced under the physical power of the culprit who inflicted it. Accordingly wives, even in the most extreme and protracted cases of bodily ill usage, hardly ever dare avail themselves of the laws made for their protection: and if, in a moment of irrepressible indignation, or by the interference of neighbors, they are induced to do so, their whole effort afterwards is to disclose as little as they can, and to beg off their tyrant from his merited chastisement.

If Mill, 140 years ago, understood why abused women don't leave their abusers immediately, why is it so hard for us to understand this today? No, women who have attempted to make claims of abuse are not forced to move back in with their abusers today; but they are without question "replaced under the physical power of the culprit" since restraining orders are useless even if the police would enforce them strictly. And shelters for abused women -- the only way many women have to avoid remaining "under the physical power of the culprit" -- are constantly struggling to stay open.

I don't really have a point, other than "how can things have changed so little in 140 years?" So here's a doggy. Don't I always reward you for sticking with me?

staying positive!

Papers. Finals. Papers. Finals. (My sister. My daughter.) I have a paper that was initially due tomorrow, but for which I have an extension until Monday, which is a good thing, because I have yet to even read through the paper topics. I have a final in a week that will consist of three straight hours of writing. It's from 4-7 pm. Then the professor wants us to stay afterwards and watch a really depressing three-hour movie, which isn't actually French, but ought to be.

But whatever. Things are tough all over. Here are two stories about people/creatures fighting the patriarchy, because I'm trying a new thing on, and it's called Staying Positive:

• Bristol Palin makes the very, very smart decision not to marry a guy she would probably hate in two years.
  
• A raccoon takes a bite out of rape culture.*

Have a lovely evening, everyone. When I die from writers' cramp around 5:30 next Thursday evening, be sure to note at my funeral that I was always so full of life.

*If I weren't so completely committed to this "Staying Positive" project, I'd point out rather bitterly that apparently it's okay to use the word "rape" in a headline when the victim is an animal, but when the victim is a woman it's "sex" or, if we're lucky, "'rape.'" Fortunately, I didn't say any of that out loud. Right?

a story in pictures

Something's... different...

go now

The Bush administration is in the process of taking one big, scary step towards dismantling women's reproductive rights. Go here and read about it:

Then send in your comments at the form linked in that blog post. These new regulations don't require approval from Congress or anyone, but the volume of public opinion could have an effect.

This is particularly terrifying to me because I just read a couple of books on the history of contraception that made it abundantly clear that being able to control our own fertility has been absolutely the single most important factor in allowing women a place in public life. (It's no coincidence that American women began fighting for the right to vote in the mid-1700s but weren't granted it until 1920 -- a few years after the dramatic downturn in fertility rates around the turn of the century.)

These new HHS regulations would allow any worker at a publicly-funded health care provider's office (including volunteers) to refuse to provide or assist in providing an IUD or any form of hormonal birth control (including emergency contraception, often prescribed for women who have been raped) to any woman for "conscience" reasons; and it would prevent those workers from being fired (or not hired in the first place) because of such refusal to do their jobs.

Low-income women, who probably can't afford to take even more time off of work and go to a different clinic (or may not even have another clinic within easy traveling distance), are the ones who will end up being hurt by this. These regulations are designed to attack the reproductive rights of the women who are already at the highest risk of not being able to obtain access to effective birth control. Poor women have historically been the last to gain any kind of reliable access to means to control their fertility. If the right-wing reactionaries in the Bush administration (redundant, I know) have anything to say about it, they will also be the first to lose it -- but not the last. Right-wing reactionaries everywhere are doing things like holding national protests against the pill, refusing to fill prescriptions, and so on. It's getting scarier out there for any woman who wants the ability to determine when and whether she gets pregnant. That is, 98% of us.

And all of this is not to mention the fact (one with which I am intimately familiar) that hormonal birth control is very often prescribed for purposes other than preventing pregnancy -- like, say, for the purpose of preventing me from being suicidal, or the purpose of preventing women with endometriosis from being in unbearable pain every second, or the purpose of preventing women with PCOS from suffering any number of debilitating side-effects.

Please, go send the ACLU's form email. It's really easy, and it's really important.

Some numbers, basically stolen from Feministe, because I have no idea what to say about this myself.

-87: The percentage of Afghan women who report suffering physical abuse, half of which is sexual.
-60: The percentage of marriages in Afghanistan which are forced.
-57: The percentage of Afghan brides who are under the age of 16.
-88: The percentage of Afghan women who are illiterate.
-5: The percentage of Afghan girls attending secondary school.
-1 in 9: The number of women in Afghanistan who die in childbirth — that’s the highest in the world, alongside Sierra Leone.
-1 Million: The number of Afghan widows who have no rights, including no right to work — leaving them to beg on the street.
-£800 to £2,000: The price of a child bride in Afghanistan.

I'm so glad our great motherfucking nation brought freedom to Afghanistan.