GLAAD Takes Issue with Transgender "Comedy"

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot

You may have missed it over the weekend, but "Saturday Night Live" aired a skit that showed men taking hormone supplements to grow breasts and change genders. The sketch was for a mock prescription drug called "Estro-Maxxx," and the fake commercial attempts to make lighthearted jabs at transgendered people by showing men with breasts. The punchline? Transgendered people are funny to look at -- or so one would think from the video:

In timely fashion, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), responded:

This segment cannot be defended as "just a joke" because there was no "joke" to speak of. The attempted comedy of the skit hinges solely on degrading the lives and experiences of transgender women. Holding people up for ridicule simply on the basis of their identity fuels a hurtful climate and puts people in danger, especially given how infrequently the media shines a fair and accurate light on the lives of transgender people. "The violence, discrimination and harassment that transgender Americans experience each and every day is no laughing matter," said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios. "Saturday Night Live is a touchstone of American comedy, but Saturday's unfunny skit sends a destructive and dehumanizing message."

1000 WORDS: Rebuilding

When most of the men in the village of San Miguel Amatitlan in Mexico left to find jobs in other cities or countries, the women in the village took on new roles and new challenges. From Marcela Taboada's work in Focusing on Latin America, "Women of Clay."

The Political is Personal: Women Writing about War

As a girl of 10, Aminatta Forna watched her father, a physician who also founded an opposition party to Siaka Stevens’ government in Sierra Leone, being taken away by the state secret police. Her first book, The Devil that Danced on the Water (2003), describes her experience of his imprisonment from 1970-73 and the search for those who hanged Mohamed Forna for treason in 1975. Of necessity, Forna introduces the conflict between private narratives and official histories, inviting her reader to experience the uncertainty, injustice, and profound trauma of war through the written word.

In her latest novel, The Memory of Love (2010), Aminatta Forna again takes up the devastating effects of the conflict in Sierra Leone. However, she reminds her reader that people not only struggle and die, but also live, love, and dream in times of war. Indeed, she goes further to assert that individuals sculpt their character and refine their integrity in relation to events on the national stage. She introduces both the idealists who died for their cause and those who betrayed ideals for the sake of personal preservation.

In a sense, Aminatta Forna simultaneously turns Carol Hanisch’s oft-cited claim, “The personal is political,” on its head and, conversely, also reasserts its truth. She demonstrates through her writing that the political is also deeply personal, even while reasserting the intended connotation of Hanisch’s statement: the personal and political inevitably intersect in the power relationships that characterize national governance, especially in times of profound oppression and civil resistance.

Forna’s unique insight into the complex interweaving of personal with public renders a poignant, at times, cynical commentator on the slow, traumatic political processes of resistance, liberation, and reform. Her truth-telling by way of fiction and memoir affords some sense of imaginative liberation from the trauma of state-sponsored violence and the failure of fellow citizens – be they fellow countrymen or members of their global family – to deal effectively with oppression, extrajudicial murder, rape, and other extraordinary acts of injustice and violence perpetrated during civil conflict.

Forna poses and responds to an uncomfortable question concerning one’s personal relationship to broader political struggle against state-sponsored oppression and armed violence. In a recent interview, speaking of her father’s murder by the state secret police for his efforts to oppose violence, corruption, and autocracy, she explores the choice he made to be a political actor rather than to remain silent out of fear for his own life and the fate of his children. Forna inquires, “When you do nothing, what do your children inherit? They inherit nothing.”

Reflecting on 2010, hardly a year in which great strides were made to address state-sponsored oppression, militarism, violence against women, and human rights abuses, the polished writing of Aminatta Forna and her peers who take up the subject of women, families, and the legacy of war seem a powerful antidote to potential myopia and amnesia that could allow us to forget the legacies of Forna's father and people like him who courageously and unselfconsciously pursue a legacy of justice and peace.

Aminatta Forna will be speaking as part of the I.M.O.W. Speakers' Series on Wednesday, January 26^th at the World Affairs Council Auditorium. To find out more about this event, click here.

Laerke Lauta's Floating Female

[Editor's Note: Please welcome new contributor Marissa Arterberry! To learn more about Marissa, check out our Contributors page.]

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

The Art Museum at Mills College in Oakland, California is currently exhibiting a five-channel video installation by Danish artist Laerke Lauta entitled Floating Female. The installation, a commission by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), is beautifully ethereal and heavy with suspense. The videos, which are projected in larger-than-life size on the museum walls, “map internal and external states of consciousness.”

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

One part of the installation representing a more external state of consciousness sets the scene in an intimate lounge. People seated in the softly lit room are engaged in conversation, and several empty beer bottles sit on a nearby tabletop. At the center of it all, a woman in a short red dress dances to softly pulsating house music with wild abandon. As she dances like no one was watching, someone clearly is: a man reclines on a nearby loveseat, taking in her performance with a bemused expression on his face. As the woman dances, seemingly without a care in the world, the suspense builds: Does she know this man? Is she intoxicated? What if she gets too carried away? Is the man an admirer, or could he pose a threat to her safety? I suddenly become very aware of all the things women must take notice of when they go out. I began to see this dancer as someone engaged in an audacious moment of pure freedom.

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

The exhibition, which was curated by Dr. Robin Clark at MCASD, “draw[s] from a northern European tradition that ascribes romantic, spiritual, and enigmatic qualities to the natural landscape. Lauta’s works are characterized by an undertone of unresolved suspense, the latent fear of a fatal event that is not directly revealed.”

One of the most arresting features in the exhibition is a diptych piece projected on two opposing walls. In one projection, a woman with white feathered wings floats on the surface of a body of water. We can see the wind blowing her feathers; she literally embodies the Floating Female. The camera is at close range, and with her wings spread wide, the woman appears to almost be flying on top of the water. The atmosphere this image creates is peaceful and dreamlike. But on the opposite wall, a simple shift in perspective changes everything: the camera angle shifts to the side, and the same figure that looked so free now appears to be a corpse floating face down in the water.

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

With freedom comes great risk, and an element of danger. Laerke Lauta’s work brings together feelings of exhilaration, suspense, and danger. She takes her audience to the edge and lets us gaze over the cliff through her eyes.

Floating Female is on display at the Mills College Art Museum until March 13th, 2011, with a lecture by Lauta on February 22nd. For more information on Laerke Lauta and her work, please visit her web site.

Swoon's Global Sculptures

Swoon's art in Berlin. Wheat-pasted paper and ink. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

The celebrated street artist Swoon tends to absorb her surroundings and combines wheat-pasted stencils with Realism à la Courbet. She creates larger-than-life images that suggest a momentary vision of a remotely familiar friend or place.Recently, BrooklynStreetArt.com co-founders Jaime Rojo and Steven Harrington sat down with Swoon at her New York studio, amidst a crowd of assistants. The interview is lively, honest, insightful, and leaves the impression that a retrospective isn't the end of the line for Swoon's plans.

Can’t We All Be Maladjusted?

“I would say about individuals, an individual dies when (s)he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can fight against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.”

--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaking in 1965

Lost in a Sunday morning reverie, the sun glinting off the undulating sea and the music of elephant seals barking dawn greetings to each other, I glanced left barely in time to see a threesome of female walkers, all in their late 60s, striding energetically toward me.

Animated in discussion, the blond-ish woman nearest me turned toward her companions.

“And I was like, ‘Hell-o?!’ I mean, really??” She craned her neck toward them, her disbelief apparent on her face.

“Yea, ‘Hello-o?!’ Whoa, what was he thinking?” her Black friend echoed back to her in obvious agreement, the woman between them nodding her approval.

I smiled at their verve, their currency with the turns-of-phrase employed by pre-teens and adolescents exchanging the latest gossip. And, frankly, I marveled at the composition of the trio itself.

Women with a Technological Edge

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at a town hall meeting in Oman where she called for the inclusion of women in business as vital for the Arab world to thrive according to The Associated Press. President Barack Obama expressed a similar vision in his June 2009 speech in Cairo where he called for a greater collaboration with the United States and Muslim communities and populations. In late April 2010, Secretary Clinton first announced the TechWomen program during President Obama’s Entrepreneurship Summit.

The Institute of International Education (IIE), a not-for-profit founded in 1919, offers a range of excellent support to scholars and students, one of their most well-known being the Fulbright. Heather Ramsey, Director of three women-focused programs designed, initiated, and managed by IIE West Coast Center in San Francisco recently shared how TechWomen, Women in Technology, and E-Mediat: Tools, Technology, and Training are all moving Muslim women closer to being active and successful entrepreneurs. All three programs are sponsored by the US Department of State and focus on both empowerment and capacity building through technological innovation in the Middle East North Africa region (MENA).

In the summer of 2011, TechWomen will match women in Silicon Valley with their counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa for a mentorship and exchange program at highly regarded technology companies. The plan is to harness the power of global business, technology, and education. According to Heather, “using innovative technologies, cutting-edge content, and social networking tools, TechWomen will foster and develop the next generation of women leaders in the technology field by providing women and girls with the access and opportunity needed to pursue tech-based careers.”

With Microsoft as one of their strongest private sector supporters, for the past five years, Women in Technology (WIT) also empowered entrepreneurial women by concentrating on three core goals:

(1) To provide substantial capacity building to Partner Organizations to expand their reach, sustainability, and ability to serve low and middle income women in underserved areas.
(2) To create a strong base of women with vital IT, business and professional skills, enabling them to advance personally and professionally.
(3) To empower women to play an integral role in shaping their country’s future.

After launching in September 2005 in Yemen, Heather shares the program exceeded expectations from the start. “By focusing on empowering women and expanding their participation in the workforce and civil society by providing partner organizations, and the women they serve, with cutting-edge training in business planning; professional development; and Information Technology was implemented in collaboration with local partners in nine countries: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Yemen.”

Currently, WIT has trained more than 10,000 women and helped build the capacity of more than 60 local women’s organizations along with 650 trainers in nine countries in the MENA region. More and more statistics indicate a link between women who are economically and technologically empowered lowering the need for humanitarian aid yet raising elements of community health, economy, and peacekeeping in the countries where they live. Heather cites, “there is strong correlation between women’s education, empowerment and employment and economic and political stability. Through the Women in Technology program, we have seen thousands of women gain new skills, confidence and in many cases, livelihoods. This positively impacts their daughters, families, communities and societies. Knowledge of technology is incredibly powerful, and seemingly innocuous. Women armed with technology are change agents. They use these cutting edge skills to build networks, lead their families, gain employment, start businesses, and build civil societies.”

The story of Rana Hadi, a student at the Science College of Baghad, is one of WIT’s most exemplary. She ascended from bomb survivor to wheelchair to WIT member then returned to college. On the day of the attack, she watched her closest friend die while her other one was torn to pieces. “Today, and after all this time has passed, I still relive the disaster minute by minute. The echoes of our giggles preceding the screams are still resonating in my ears whenever I immerse in my thoughts … And whenever I wake up I find my fist clenched in a bloody fist,” said Rana, in late 2008 when WIT asked her to share her story.

She calls her life after the bomb, “my second life, with hope.”

Heather acknowledges how deeply the programs impact not only the women’s lives who are changed by them but how deeply affecting it is to lead such innovative change. Challenges exist, of course, but Heather shares how great the reward of working on the three programs. “As with many women, balancing work and being a (single) mother continues to be my biggest challenge. And, truly, I am so fortunate to have a supportive employer and to work on projects with many extraordinarily strong women and working mothers around the world. This challenge is also my greatest joy. I am proud that these projects will help pave the way to a better future for the women of my daughter’s generation, many of whom may not be as fortunate as she. Practically speaking, I try to take one day at a time, otherwise I can feel overwhelmed, I value the simple joys of seeing my daughter develop each day, and I always remind myself of the enormous challenges faced by the majority of women around the world and the incredible strength and perseverance they exhibit. They inspire me each and every day.”

IIE West Coast is always looking to take WIT and its model to other regions and countries. If you have ideas, questions, or would like to be involved, please contact: Heather Ramsey, Director, Global Partnership, IIE West Coast Center, at hramsey@iie.org.

CLIO TALKS BACK: Abigail Adams, Entrepreneurial Woman Extraordinaire

Clio scan / Indiana University Press design

Jacket cover of Portia, with Abigail Adams portrait

Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818) is perhaps best known as the second "First Lady" of the United States. What is less well known is that she became an enterprising woman and sole support of her family when, in the 1770s and 1780s her husband John Adams effectively gave up his law practice for public service. He was instrumental in launching the American Revolution against the British, serving as a member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts and later representing the fledgling nation to (and negotiating with) the major European powers, in Amsterdam, in Paris, and in London. For over 20 years of their 54-year old marriage, Abigail and her “dearest friend” lived mostly apart, though keeping closely in touch through letters.

Abigail Adams first took over operation of the family farm, managing its tenants and coping with a shortage of farm hands and rising labor costs. She then turned to merchandising and brokering – selling desirable and scarce goods such as chinaware, calico, handkerchiefs and ribbons that John sent to her by ship from Europe. She also speculated in land and acquired extensive holdings, in the face of troubles with currency inflation, counterfeit paper money, and increasing taxation. All this she did in an era when wives were technically deprived of property and the ability to make financial transactions – but she accomplished all this in John’s name, serving in effect as her husband’s “deputy.”

Her biographer, Edith B. Gelles, describes Abigail’s activities in these terms, quoting from her very extensive correspondence, which has become a treasure of American history and literature:

Clio scan / William Morrow design

Jacket cover, Abigail and John, with portraits

“Since she could not own property in her own right, she was obliged to inform John [12 July 1782] that ‘You are named in the Charter as original proprietor, so no deed was necessary.’ Ironic indeed that John now owned over 1,600 acres of Vermont which he did not want, purchased by Abigail, who had the courage to speculate and the cleverness to negotiate for land she could not legally possess. If the situation appeared unjust to Abigail, she did not write about such a reaction in her surviving letters.”

“The Adamses didn’t become rich, but that was not Abigail’s ambition. Her aim was to maintain the family, to feed, clothe, and educate her children without going into debt. She found that a satisfying goal.”

For most women, economic enterpreneurship has been and remains first and foremost about survival. The remarkable Abigail Adams was no exception.

Sources:
Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Indiana University Press, 1992), chap. 3.
Edith B. Gelles, Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2009), chap. 6.

Words of Hatred, Words of Healing: Re-forming our Political Discourse

[Editor's Note: Please welcome our newest contributor, Caitlin Reyes Brune! This is Caitlin's first post for Her Blueprint. To find out more about Caitlin, visit our Contributor's page.]

"...What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light."

(from Praise Song for the Day, written and spoken by poet Elizabeth Alexander at the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, 20 January 2009 and subsequently published in Crave Radiance, a collection of new and previously published poems, pp. 247-248)

As Saturday’s news of the cold-blooded, brutal shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a score of others reverberated around the vast space of digital media, I brooded ruefully about the state of political discourse. How, rather than embracing the “sharp sparkle” and “widening pool of light” that poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked and that so many Americans experienced so palpably on that crisp January morning in 2009, had we managed to regress into the worst kind of darkness imaginable: that which prompts one human being to irrevocably disregard the humanity of another?

Haiti: One Year Later

On January 12, 2010, one year ago today, Haiti's main city of Port-au-Prince was the epicenter of a massive earthquake that left millions of already poverty-stricken Haitians homeless and living in tent cities. Her Blueprint reported on Haiti throughout the past year with stories of hope from Human Rights Watch; reports of displacement and tuberculosis from public health expert and the United Nations Special Deputy Envoy to Haiti Paul Farmer; cited the publications created to voice the taboo: sexual violence against women mounting in the tent cities; then, finally the start of a cholera epidemic that according to the Huffington Post's Cholera in Haiti: A Look from the Trenches remains present. Pictured here are a mother and child being cared for by a female health worker in June 2010. As I write this, I wonder if they are alive. If so, their chances of still being displaced within a tent city are almost certain.

In a press release, Joia Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer at Partners In Health, an organization leading the post-quake recovery that Paul Farmer founded, shared that current conditions remain rather "grim."

Today, we stand with our friends and colleagues from our Haitian sister organization, Zanmi Lasante, and with millions of Haitians in Haiti and abroad to remember that terrible day -- to remember both those who died, and those who suffered and continue to face the painful reality of a Haiti post-January 12, 2010. This is particularly true for over a million internally displaced people living in crowded Port-au-Prince camps. Yet while there should be righteous indignation about the conditions in the camps, we must continue to highlight the plight of the urban and rural poor throughout Haiti whose struggle against poverty and injustice pre-dated the earthquake and has been made immeasurably more difficult by the disaster. The cholera epidemic -- due to lack of access to clean water and sanitation against a backdrop of malnutrition and inadequate health services in much of the country -- is a graphic illustration of the ongoing need. It is easy to understand that optimism would be in short supply. There are, however, glimmers of hope.

Along with the Haitian Ministry of Health and many partner organizations, Partners In Health calls for an international movement of solidarity, similar to the one that brought an end to South Africa's Apartheid. They also call for Haitians to become actors in rebuilding their country alongside the 10,000 NGOs and foreign-government projects so as to create "development of large-scale public infrastructure including health, education, water and sanitation that will reverse the impoverishment of the Haitian people."

One year later vast work remains to be done for those still living in abject poverty and far worse. Glimmers of hope need to be replaced by strategic long-term plans and bold action. Partners In Health one year report on Haiti is available here.

Photo credit: Doctors of the World UK

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Violence in American Politics

Two weeks ago, on New Year's Day as I ran along the Hudson River in Manhattan en route to the Brooklyn Bridge in celebration of a new year, I passed a young woman wearing a shirt that said, "Women's rights are human rights...," the phrase made famous by Hillary Clinton in her rousing 1995 speech delivered at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. The bold, black lettering on the runner's white t-shirt reminded me of the volunteer work I did for Clinton's campaign for the presidency. How often I was jarred while making calls to constituents throughout my country who told me they would never vote for her. "ABC," they said, "Anything But Clinton." When I asked why, it was almost always, "Because she's a woman."

For the past weeks, I've been working on a story about Afghanistan since I landed back in America two months ago and walked into the airport to face an enormous television showing CNN reports of new tanks for the War on Terror, new evidence of terror, new fear to fear. I watched non-US citizens receive ocular scans and a young Indian man lead away from the rest of us to a different room for questioning. Welcome home to America. How much fear will I find here? How much poverty? How much violence?

This past Sunday as I completed my first official training run for Comrades 2011 which I will run for Women for Women International in ode to the silenced hell of violence Congolese women have been living for over a decade; tears came at moments while I ran staring into the sun summoning their plight for my own endurance and strength. I thought again about what I see in our world and now home in my own country. I thought about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, pictured here, and her weekend shooting, along with 19 others including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl born on September 11, 2001.

While living in Paris, I read The New York Times daily and during America's 2010 election I was at times horrifed by the language coming out of my country. The rhetoric was volatile. The NY Times piece Being Glenn Beck shared that, "during the first 14 months of his Fox News Show, Beck and his guests mentioned facism 172 times, Nazis 134 times, Hitler 115 times, the Holocaust 58 times, and Joseph Goebbels 8 times."

Enter the media's current discussion of how much violent rhetoric leads to action. The Huffington Post, along with myriad other major new sources, report cross hairs once appeared on Sarah Palin's FaceBook page of Congresswoman Gifford's district. The blog questions whether or not these cross hairs have any bearance on the shooting by noting what major news sources covered their existence versus those who bypassed it, while also citing a March 25, 2010 MSNBC article where Giffords herself says she found the cross hairs relevant. The Washington Post poses the poignant question in the headline, Gabrielle Gifford's Shooting in Tuscon, Did it Stem from State of Political Discourse?

At brunch in Chelsea yesterday, a friend asked if I thought Gifford's shooting had to do with the fact she is a woman in politics. Rather than pummel him with my litany of gender-based violence statistics facing females worldwide, I replied that nothing ever has one reason. Her gender cannot be the only reason. Instead, I shared that as this country wades through the beginning steps of untangling this tragedy and recognizes that violence in America is now undoubtedly creating outright acts of murder in the political sphere that these questions are exactly the kind that need to be addressed and soon.

The Associated Press' Tucson Rampage Casts Light on Toxic Political Tone shares the mounting acts of vandalism and threats Representative Gabrielle Giffords faced before this final horrendous act. In the coming weeks as answers to how and why are found, I hope most for America to shift focus onto what cannot be denied: volatile discourse does nothing to solve this country's mounting needs and though it is not the only reason for Representative Gabrielle Gifford's shooting, it most likely is one of them.

Women's Rights Unconstitutional?

Justice Scalia. via Flickr / Stephen Masker

Today, the day after new congressional representatives were sworn in, the new Republican majority ruled that the new Speaker of the House John Boehner read the U.S. Constitution aloud --something that historians estimate has only been done twice before in U.S. history.

But the reading -- a clearly symbolic reiteration of the centrality of the Constitution to government -- comes hot on the heels of some disturbing comments about women's Constitutional rights from one of the country's most powerful lawmakers, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a recent interview with California Lawyer, the magazine asked Scalia if it's erroneous to apply the 14th amendment (which includes the Equal Protection Clause that prohibits states from denying citizens "equal protection of the laws" to issues of gender discrimination or sexual discrimination, since the lawmakers who drafted that amendment in 1868 almost certainly weren't considering those kinds of discriminations.

Scalia, a staunch originalist, replies:

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that.... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.

So despite winning the right to vote, the fact that women make up half of the U.S. workforce, and constitute a majority portion of university students, despite the fact that Scalia shares the bench of the highest judicial body in the country with two women, there is still no constitutional prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex.

Terrifying, to say the least.

In response to Scalia's comments, today as Mr. Boehner read aloud, a group of Democratic lawmakers and women's rights activists gathered outside the Capitol Building in the dreary January weather to ask the Republican majority congress to insert an Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution that clearly protects women's rights.

Until then, despite all the progress we've made toward gender equity in the U.S., women's liberties are not guaranteed.