[alligator]

I don't know how many Loungers are still following this, but it appears that the infamous Duke U. Lacrosse Team rape case is collapsing.

Mike Nifong, the DA on the case, is in some trouble for making public statements contradicted by the actual case evidence:

News & Observer 1

News & Observer 2

New York Times

Here's a column on the matter from Wendy McElroy:*

www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,199358,00.html

Here's an overview of the problems with the case from La Shawn Barber.

Nobody has less sympathy for fratboy jock assholes than I do - well, excepting their girlfriends and other students who have to deal with them - but this whole thing stinks to high heaven.



*Bust's forum software seems to have a problem with commas in "\link" formatting.

[lilacwine13]

My problem was with the word "feminazi" rather than the expectations solitary's mom has with her. Sorry if I came off as someone who's jumping on solitary for wanting to be a stay at home mom. I think if you can do that and want to, it's fine. When it's being forced on you, then it's problematic.

[bklynhermit]

i guess my assumption (and it was just that, an assumption) was that solitary's mom had expressed annoyance at the fact that she wanted to stay home in general, not the specifics of the situation (which she didn't tell us) or that she really does expect her to be superwoman like that.

there's a huge difference between 'you should totally have a kid right now even when you're probably not in the best situation for it' and 'don't assume you'll be a SAHM', which is what i got from her original post.

and also, it doesn't sound like the issue is your mom being a militant feminist so much as her trying to impose her own choices on you. i can't think of a single (real) feminist i know who'd pressure their daughter to have kids while she's still in school and planning a career as intensive as the military, not to mention still very young.

and i do think staying home is quite admirable -- it's just that you can't really make assumptions about what your situation will be.

your situation sounds a lot like mine, solitary. i live 2000 miles away and am just starting out in my career. my mom is suddenly putting the pressure on for me to settle down and have kids, because that's what she did: raced through college, married my father, and popped out four babies before she was 30. and she's doing this even though she knows i'm totally single, working minimum 50 hours a week, make next to no money, and will continue paying my dues in my field for the next few years at least. but that was her timeframe, and now she's trying to hold me to it.

[pepper]

hey, my mom had a friend when i was growing up who was the most radically extreme feminist imaginable. dang that woman was scary. you don't know unless you've met her yourself whether she's freaky about it or not. sounds like this mom in trying to live vicariously through her daughter and that's never a good thing.
i work, i raise this kid on my own, i go to school, and i'd trade it in for a stay at home mommy job in a second. that doesn't mean that i don't take pride in what i do for a living, no matter what the job i hold may be. it doesn't mean that i don't strive to excel at it, to be amazing in my field, i DO. it just is not my lifestyle of choice. and i think it IS incredible that women are able to pull it off every day. it is unnatural to have that much pressure on you all the time and not totally melt down. it's a lot, too much at times, and i would Never slight any woman who didn't feel up to it and wished from something different. leaving my wee kid in the hands of someone else all day every week day so i can go out and earn enough money to feed, house and clothe us SUCKS!! i Hate it. pressuring a woman to want that kind of lifestyle when she doesn't is shitty. and telling someone that they're too young to properly know their own mind is pretty weak too. sure, your feelings may change over time but that doesn't mean jack right now. now is really all you've got to go on, looking at things from a perspective down the road that may never play out is kinda useless, no? when i was younger i thought for sure that i would never want children but look at me now. still, at that time i lived my life accordingly and that is all that anyone can do. trying to live for the unimaginable future is futile.

snaf, i wasn't disagreeing with you just so you know. i only meant that there Should be a strong enough name for that kind of behavoir and 'nazi' certainly is not it.

[solitary_fey]

I apologize for the word... bad idea... my bad. Militant feminist is good.
Perhaps I did not explain the situation as to make you make assumptions about me. I have lived a thousand miles away from my mother for a year, barely waiting a day after graduation. I am engaged to a wonderful man that I have been with for three years and know, although this might seem strange to many, that I will be together with for the rest of my life until one of us dies. I personally don't plan to have children until I am a lot older, and stable finacially and emotionally. I plan to join the Navy next year. My mother knows this. Last month my mother called me and ask me "are you having kids yet? you should have kids... you and him have been together longer than me and your dad were." When I said I was still in school she said "well there's daycare and so and so did it." I am dead f***ing serious.
I am ambitious. But not for a career, for knowledge. There isn't a career in the world that sounds better to me than staying home with my kids. I apologize if that seems strange.

P.S. Maybe the word works for my mom, because she DOES make all feminists look bad.

[bklynhermit]

how is it extreme feminism to worry about your high school age daughter who is presumably nowhere near having children simply declaring that she will stay at home with her children when/if she has them? i mean, how could solitary fey even know what she will or won't do?

i think she might have been annoyed because there are a lot of young women out there selling themselves short based on these hypothetical issues. i knew tons of women in college who chose not to be ambitious because 'well, i'm just going to stay home with the kids anyway, why bother applying to grad school?'

i don't think it's so much that she wants you to be wonderwoman, she just knows that you're (presumably) a very young woman with a lot of choices to make between now and the day you actually do have children. and whether you'll stay home or not should ideally be one of those bridges you should cross when you come to it. your mother probably wants you to be who you want to be, for yourself, for as long as you can before it's time to make childrearing decisions. especially since you have no way of knowing what the situation's going to be. what if you end up a single mother? what if the father's income alone won't support your family? what if you have a kid, stay home for 6 months and then realize you're really unhappy? i think your mom just wants you to keep your options open so you don't get trapped in a bad situation or compromise your own happiness.

how is that being an 'extreme feminist'? and even if she did really want you to make that choice, how is even that being an 'extreme feminist'? most women in this country work and raise children at the same time, regardless of what they planned for. since when is reality 'extreme'?

[lilacwine13]

I don't like that word and the connotations. I didn't lose any members of my family to the Holocaust, but Hitler and his party are things I don't like associated with a cause I believe in. Also, snafooey made some good points about how the two ideas contradict one another.

Extreme feminism would be good. For some reason, I like militant feminism, which is somewhat accurate as well. A part of me wants to say stereotypical feminism, even though I think that would be problematic (As in, feminism is too broad for stereotypes and it is kinda playing into the conservative's views.).

[seraphine]

I agree with you, snafooey. I feel the same way about how loosely some use the term "gay" as an adjective with a negative connotation.

How about "extreme feminist" or "extreme feminism"? I think that may get the message across more accurately.

[snafooey]

Fair enough.

All I'm saying is that if you look at the Wikipedia entry or even some of the bullshit hurled around the urban dictionary (yes, anyone can post any kind of garbage they want there, but it is an unofficial dictionary of slang, and it gives you a pretty good idea of some of the vulgar attitudes associated with that term, let alone the offensiveness of its roots), you wouldn't want to associate yourself with a term that is generally used by your enemies to try and undermine you (there are a couple of entries in there that try to differentiate between feminists and "manhaters" but most of them just tend to conflate the two terms).

I'm not really sure what terms would be better - maybe because I've met dozens of feminists and not one of them has fallen under that category. It's like some kind of mythical anti-unicorn of frothing-at-the-mouth feminism. Not that I'm doubting the veracity of the original poster's experience, but again, it's not something I have ever experienced personally (i.e., meeting a feminist who advocates that a woman "has to do it all"/not have choice as to how she wants to live her life).

ETA: And I'm sorry if pulling out "the Jew card" makes me particularly strident on this issue, but hearing someone on a feminist board use that term so casually makes my stomach lurch. It's bad enough that it's become so commonplace, but you'd think people here would know better.

[pepper]

suggest an alternative. there is a need for a word that is strong enough to encompass that sort of idealogy i think.

[snafooey]

Honestly, I can't stand the word "feminazi" - at the risk of sounding like one, if you've lost family members in the Holocaust or even if you have just a basic understanding of Nazism (i.e., that they were pretty much against everything feminism stands for), you would be embarrassed to use it. The Nazis came into power during a backlash against one of the most progressive periods in German history; a big part of their platform was a return to "Kinder, Küche, Kirche," translated as “Children, Kitchen, Church� and Hitler believed that a woman's "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home."

It's bad enough that religious conservatives and reactionary right-wingers use this term - they generally have no clue and the word "Nazi" tends to get tossed around like a football whenever anyone (on the right or the left) disagrees with an opposite point of view; when feminists themselves actually use it, we're giving credibility to a term that isn't just insulting but completely ignorant as well.

[solitary_fey]

My mother is a feminazi (sorry if you're offended by the phrase, its just what I've come to call her.) and every time I say "Well yeah, I want to go to college, but when I have kids, I want to be a stay at home mom and a housewife" and she just gives me this look like shes so disapointed in me. and its not that she doesn't want me to have kids, she can't wait for grandkids, but she wants me to do it all, have a full time career, raise perfect children who get straight A's and still have a beautiful homemade dinner on the table by six. Not that she did any of those things, but I should aspire to.
I AM NOT F***ING WONDER WOMAN!
that song just made me think of that, luci. Thank you for listenning to the rant.

[katiebelle2882]

DIT-TO erin

[erinjane]

I think that's very cool and a good step. If you ask me, porn isn't going anywhere. And I don't want to be chastised by the feminist community because I admit that I enjoy porn, and I wish that there were more women-friendy alternatives.

[katiebelle2882]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/artslife/story.html?id=279d0f37-010e-4a9 c-a985-459249ec467a&k=80751

interesting!

[crazyoldcatlady]

upon looking a little further, i think you can still register... i would love to go, and if that pans out, all i have to do is see what my work schedule would be like...

[mermaidgirl13]

Cecelia Fire Thunder is the main reason I'm going. I'm not a member of NOW and I haven't registered for the summit yet. I thought you could register as a non-member too? It seemed that way to me - there were two different "non-member" registration fees, one was cheaper for students.

I am waiting to sign up to see if any of my friends will go with me. Even though, I shouldn't bother waiting because I'm going to go alone if I have to.

Katie, It's at the Crown Royal Hotel I think.

[lucizoe]

hi mermaid - it's from the musical "Working." The high school I used to design for put it on in March (my last show before moving - sigh) and that number in particular is really powerful.

[crazyoldcatlady]

mermaid-- the NOW conference is actually in a locale feasible for me, but upon reading the requirements, you have to be NOW member for 90 days prior (do i have that correct ? my mind is so fuzzy right now, and reading their legalese is not going over so well)

which sucks, because I would have rilly liked to have seen this lady:

Cecelia Fire Thunder, President of the Oglala Sioux tribe, made headlines when she vowed to defend women's reproductive rights now imperiled by the draconian anti-abortion law recently enacted in South Dakota.

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she announced to the press on March 20. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

[katiebelle2882]

hey mermaid, i live on long island. the conference is at SUNY albany right? i went to school at Union College so i might visit some friends and go to the conference.