Isabel Allende is a Goddess

Sure, I haven't loved every one of her books, but this is a great speech. It's worth watching the whole thing. I promise.

From last year's TED conference:

More opinions on "Reproductive Outsourcing"

I think Feministe does a much better job of saying what I meant about the recent India surrogacy boom. Here's where they really hit it:

If we’re going to do the surrogacy thing — and we already are doing it — then let’s call it what it is: An exchange of money for services. And let’s not pussyfoot around the fact that in a whole lot of service industries, the people providing services are poor, female and brown. Think of housekeepers, fieldworkers, childcare providers, elder-care workers — all of these women use their bodies in the service of others. Many of them are exploited, some are abused, and most are under-paid. But we only go into panic mode when the services provided are sexual.

But the article took it to the next, more important step:

Rich white American women paying poor women of color in developing nations to gestate their children for them seems wrong. I don’t oppose reproductive technologies, but it gets trickier when you’re paying someone in a far less privileged situation to be a human incubator for you. I have to roll my eyes at the way surrogacy is framed in order to fit in with acceptable constructions of femininity — women are surrogate mothers because they love being pregnant, not because they need to make money and pregnancy is a pretty good way to do that. Addressing the poverty issue would require us to actually look at who is getting ahead and at whose expense, and that doesn’t tend to go over so well. Addressing surrogacy as one service industry among many wherein the bodies of poor women of color are used to further the wants of wealthier white people would require us to look at the systematic racisms and inequalities that prop up the entire global economy. And that definitely does not go over so well.

Very nicely put.

Well, it worked for JFK and Lincoln...

...so why not Bhutto? An AP article sheds light on Bhutto's "mixed legacy." Since my Pakistani history is a little shoddy, I'm going to quote the article:

Bhutto's tenure as prime minister certainly helped open doors in Pakistan's male-dominated society, they say. But it was also sullied by the allegations of corruption, dirty politics and unfulfilled promises that have dogged the rule of every Pakistani leader, male or female.

"Yes, of course there was some symbolism in having a women as prime minister," said Aysha Iqbal, a 23-year-old business student in Lahore.

But "she was prime minister because her father was prime minister," Iqbal continued.

There's been Indira Gandhi in India; Sirimavo Bandaranaike and her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratanga, in Sri Lanka; Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh, and, of course, Bhutto, who twice served as Pakistan's prime minister, between 1988-1990 and 1993-1996.

Every one of them rose to prominence after the death of a male relative — no coincidence in a corner of the world where family often dictates one's occupation, be it as a street sweeper or a prime minister.

In Bhutto's case, she took the leadership of the populist Pakistan People's Party founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 following a military coup. She then led the party to election victory.

"She was our heroine at the time," said Zareen Ahmed, chief of the British Muslim Forum, whose family comes from Pakistan. "We all crowded around the television at our house here and we were all very proud of her. For young women like me, she gave us hope."

Bhutto was young and glamorous, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford who could campaign through Karachi slums as

And, early in her administration, there were advances for women in Pakistan.confidently as she had graced the salons of London and New York.

But Bhutto also picked up all the baggage that came with running Pakistan, a largely impoverished land that was — and still is — in many parts near-feudal.

She became the center of a vast patronage system, dealing in political debts and working with a network of old-timers whose issues became her issues. Overshadowing everything was Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence establishment.

Women's rights took a back seat, and Pakistan remained as corrupt as it had been under her predecessors, perhaps even more so. Her husband, whom she wed in a traditional marriage arranged by her mother, quickly earned the nickname "Mr. 10 Percent" for the tens of millions he is alleged to have taken in kickbacks.

"I think Western feminists want to view Bhutto and the other women leaders as pioneers," said Muneeza Rashed, 38-year-old woman in Lahore.

"But they're not. They're more like throwbacks to the men who came before them. They practice the same kind of old-boy politics. Helping women is secondary for them," she said.

Under Bhutto, most Pakistani women still lived the impoverished, home-bound lives they had lived before. Girls still went uneducated while their brothers were sent off to school. And those women who endured the tragedy of being raped still found themselves contending with laws that discriminated against the victims of sex crimes — laws that would only be changed years later by President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 military coup.

"In many ways women benefited very little under her," said Unaiza Malik, 64, who was born in Pakistan and now works with the Muslim Women's Society in London.

"It's only in death that she will become an icon — in some ways people will look at her accomplishments through rose-tinted glasses rather than remembering the corruption charges, her lack of achievements or how much she was manipulated by other people."

Sorry to quote so heavily, but I was definitely one of those "Western feminists" who didn't know enough about it. Figured I should let the people who know what they're talking about speak.

Miss Dairy Farmer, 2008?

This AP article is a little depressing.

Apparently, the number of women farmers in Wisconsin is growing.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service's most recent agricultural census, done in 2002, showed women were the principal operators of 7,353 Wisconsin farms, up about 27 percent from 1997. There was about a 13 percent increase nationally during the same period.

The percentage of Wisconsin's female principal farm operators increased from 6.7 percent in 1997 to 9.5 percent in 2002.

And the trend seems to be continuing:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences said there were 1,311 women enrolled last fall and 1,005 men, compared with 796 men and only 353 women during the 1977-1978 school year.

The article mentions the increase of mechanization, the choice to raise smaller animals and produce dairy, and...here's the depressing part...

somebody has to work elsewhere to get health insurance, and often it is the man because they usually can find better paying jobs

The quote is from a dairy farmer in Wisconsin named Diane Grezenski. So women are turning to work that will help their families survive. Nothing new there. Is this just a replay of the past? Women do the jobs men don't want to do/ can't afford to do/ are too busy to do? Is farming becoming "women's work"?

Or is this a necessity of life in Wisconsin? I wouldn't know.

While it's possible this farming trend is a good thing, there's a definite danger that this is just a shift in ideology. Nursing became women's work, teaching did as well. Hell, even farming was during World War 2.

Seriously, what was Rosie the Riveter all about? Get women to work at industrial/agricultural jobs while their men were off fighting in the war. When they come back, go back into your little house hole and be happy. If men get laid off from these elusive jobs with health care, where will they go? Back to farming. And the women will go back to their "happy," sheltered lives. I'm not saying it's the reality, just that it's a possibility.

This Just In: Some Women STILL Don't Like Hillary Clinton

Oh Wall Street Journal, alpha females?
Apparently, businesswomen aren't sold on Hillary Clinton. And according to the WSJ, it's because they're either Republicans, afraid to speak their minds (natch), or (gasp) they're actually looking at the issues.

In last week's On the Media(great podcast - check it out), there was a piece about the fact that we all call Hillary Clinton by her first name. Co-host Bob Garfield wondered if it made him a bad feminist, or if it just made him a bad reporter (Clinton is branding herself as "Hillary!"). I don't know, but I'm going to stop using the familiar when describing someone I don't know personally. I hate when people do it with celebrities, so why should I do it with a presidential candidate?

In other news: I love Nellie McKay. There isn't a good video of her song Mother of Pearl, but definitely check it out. Here's her only (I think) music video:
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She performed both of these when I saw her in Brooklyn. Go: love her as I love her.

The Yoga Stick of Death

We've all heard by now that Linda Stein's PA, Natavia Lowery, has been arrested for Stein's murder. Lowery confessed to beating Stein with her own four-pound exercise stick six or seven times. Case closed, murder solved.

This is a bizarro case in which no party comes out smelling rosy. Linda Stein apparently verbally abused Lowery. She waved the stick at her and blew pot in Lowery's face.

Lowery has been accused of identity theft and was in charge of things like social security numbers and bank accounts belonging to really rich people.

Anyone who's been a PA knows that it's thankless, tiring work. I've never wanted to kill a boss, but then I've never actually been a PA. If you aren't treated like a human being, you're not going to behave like one. For some, it takes longer than others. For Lowery, it only took four months. Why didn't she just quit?

Regardless, this is an issue of humans treating other humans like garbage. It happens every day and sometimes there are consequences.I'm not in any way condoning what Lowery did. She was stupid for not quitting a job that made her feel the way she did. But maybe this is the pound on the head people need to start treating each other better.

Just saying for the record: I love my bosses. They treat everyone equally and never condescend. Actually, I've been lucky most of my life to have good people telling me what to do. But I can only imagine what it must've been like for Lowery.

Aside from all the general human being stuff, what does this mean for women?

Linda Stein was a powerful woman. She managed The Ramones and went to Studio 54. She was a breast cancer survivor. She was a loud New Yorker. And Elton John is writing a song in memory of her. Lowery...all we know is she has this identity theft thing in her past and she murdered Stein.

The crime, the people involved, it all adds up to "those crazy women doing crazy things." All the papers are ringing with it. They love a good "catfight." I hate it. Sure, she was sort of famous. But would her murder be getting as much publicity if it weren't so...juicy?

And this yoga stick thing makes us all look bad. It's like a D-movie, where women pull hair and wear short skirts. It's like Chuck (seriously, cat fights factor in way too often in that show). I know neither party was thinking about the implications for women, nor should they have. But I, for one, can only hang my head and say: we're not all like that. I don't even USE a yoga stick.