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The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...
October 2007 - Posts
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Melinda, thank you for your heartfelt and eye-opening post on being a pro-life Democrat. I get frustrated enough being put on the defensive for being a women who is pro-life, without the added angst you have of feeling excluded from your own party. I've Read More...
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Today's the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and some bloggers are arguing that the ubiquitous " pink-ribbon " approach has gone too far . (See the second panel.) Over at The Assertive Cancer Patient you can find a critique of the relentless Read More...
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On Obama-bama-bama ... Apropos of your great post on Hillary and toughness last night, Meghan, it’s worth contrasting the whole “manly-girl = scary-girl” Hillary narrative with the other big campaign story this week: Barack Obama needs to stop being such Read More...
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about the Dutch-Somali politician and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, best known for her outspoken defense of the rights of Muslim women. Among other things, I noted that the Dutch parliament was about to vote on whether Read More...
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If we need any reminder that it's not easy to be the first popular female candidate for the American presidency, it arrived Monday in the form of an announcement by the AP that Hillary Clinton was leading in yet another poll. This one? The candidate likely Read More...
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Hillary jumps the same way as Obama: "I am deeply troubled by Judge Mukasey’s continued unwillingness to clearly state his views on torture and unchecked Executive power. The Attorney General is the chief defender of the rule of law in our country. After Read More...
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OK, XX Team, most of you are solid supporters of choice, so please help me out here. After my piece on Michelle and Barack Obama’s marriage ran yesterday, a lot of the reaction I saw on the Web boiled down to: I’m not interested in anything that woman Read More...
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In a press release today, Obama said of Mukasey: “While his legal credentials are strong, his views on two critical and related matters are, in my view, disqualifying. We don't need another attorney general who believes that the President enjoys an unwritten Read More...
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Wow, I take a couple days off and all heck breaks loose on the teen sex front. I have to agree with Melinda that there is a vast middle ground that is being missed up in Portland, Maine. What have they got against parents up there, anyhow? One thing that Read More...
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In answer to your question , Emily, no, I don’t think it would be good if 12 became the new 16, and suddenly preteen sex seemed perfectly normal or even yawn-worthy. That said, I think we as a culture do too much gnashing of teeth over the preservation Read More...
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I think Juliet is right: We do worry more about girls and sex, as I've argued here and here in Slate. Although I share Emily's impression that my teenage peers most confused about their sexuality were girls, I don't think we should rely on anecdotal evidence Read More...
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If early sex isn't necessarily bad sex , could we agree that it's usually a bad idea? I'm agnostic about calling parents, because it seems so case by case to me, in terms of the kids and the parental relationships involved . And I'm all for the release Read More...
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This weekend, a friend showed me artist Edina Tokodi’s incredible moss graffiti , which features moss in the form of animals like rabbits and deer and abstract compositions mounted on walls in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tokodi’s work is a whimsical surprise, Read More...
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Given that this is a women’s blog, I can’t help but point out that the last couple posts on preteen sex haven’t been gender neutral – they’ve focused primarily on girls engaging in “risky” behavior. Torie, though you start out discussing any person 13 Read More...
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Torie, I agree that there’s no need to call the D.A.’s office on teenagers messing around, but I do think the parents of middle schoolers have a right to know the score, so to speak. I don’t what’s up in Portland, Maine, but they seem to be having trouble Read More...
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Following the kerfuffle over birth control for the Hanna Montana set, health officials in Portland, Maine, have agreed to report “all illegal sexual activity involving minors as required by law,” according to an article from a Maine newspaper. That includes Read More...
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Sam Brownback feels reassured about Giuliani's stance on abortion. No surprise there --in addition to whatever Giuliani said to Brownback in private, he has made it clear that he will appoint Supreme Court justices in the overturn-Roe mold. When does Read More...
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If Mukasey does say now that waterboarding is torture, should that be enough for the Democrats to wave him through? What about his testimony on the presidents power to act outside statutory boundaries with regard to interrogation and wiretapping? And Read More...
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After Phil and I wracked our brains to understand why Michael Mukasey wouldn’t just admit that waterboarding is torture, and in light of Rudy Giuliani’s weaselly parsing of the same question , it’s heartening to read this morning – via the AP -- that Read More...
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Here's what Giuliani has to say about waterboarding, in reponse to a question about AG-choice Mukasey's refusal to say that the tactic amounts to torture: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. Read More...
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Opening statements in the Darren Mack trial yesterday revealed some sort of crazy quilt defense strategy that seems to involve tossing out at least 12 alternative theories and hoping one of them resonates with each the jurors. Of course the blame-the-victim Read More...
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Good catch, Melinda , on how Rudy wants to help the "worst people" in our society as long as they are his pals—and surely Rudy considers child-molesting priests worse than squeegee men. This article describes Giuliani's friendship with the defrocked priest Read More...
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Hillary as Scarlett at Twelve Oaks does not work for me, with or without bosoms showing. But what has my big-girl panties in a twist today is Rudy’s regard for a man removed from his job as a priest over multiple allegations of sex abuse . After the church Read More...
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Parody site of the day, via feministing: Guns for girls . "My Little Carbine" takes the cake for its pastiche of My Little Ponies with assault weapons. It's startling to me how perniciously traditional many children's TV ads still are. We didn't have Read More...
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Emily, I think you are right that Hillary uses the language of “choice” in a really fascinating way. When I covered her Senate race against Rick Lazio in 2000, I was immediately struck by the way she used that word to explain everything from her position Read More...
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A new Los Angeles Times /Bloomberg poll finds that 42 percent of Democrats believe Hillary Clinton was right to stay with Bill after the Lewinsky affair. Just 5 percent say she made the wrong choice. Meanwhile, Hillary talks about her marriage in the Read More...
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I must confess to a more than passing obsession with the Darren Mack trial, which gets under way today in Las Vegas . Mack stands accused of fatally stabbing his estranged wife Charla with their 7-year-old daughter upstairs in the home, then shooting Read More...
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"I'm well aware that my opponents on both sides are paying a lot more attention to me," Hillary Clinton said. "I'm reminded by some of my friends that when you get to be my age, having so many men paying attention to you is kind of flattering." I like Read More...
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Australia is also in the midst of an election season, though theirs has big two advantages over ours right now. 1. Their parliament election, which will determine whether John Howard remains prime minister or has to move aside in favor of opposition candidate Read More...
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The good news in the study Meghan writes about is that both men and women reported feeling more comfortable in professional groups that included more women. Does this mean that men, too, find predominantly male groups more intimidating? Or less interesting? Read More...
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Two articles about the latest surveillance technology available to the modern family-- you can read here in the Guardian about a new jacket with a GPS chip in it, and here in the New York Times about new GPS-equipped cell phones—have left me feeling more Read More...
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Tying the two previous posts together -- female self-doubt, and Hillary's canny use of Drudge -- I see a lesson here for those who study how non-nurturing environments undermine young women. Tell these girls to just keep swinging. That's what Hillary Read More...
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More on women, science, and stereotype threat: A new study published by Psychological Science of undergraduate women majoring in math, science, and engineering found fresh evidence that cues of gender-imbalance negatively affect not only women's performance Read More...
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This morning’s NYT reports on how skilled Hillary Clinton’s team has been in wringing favorable coverage out of the Drudge Report— and praises her maturity in “a development that has surprised much of the political world: Mrs. Clinton is learning to play Read More...
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Alas, Dahlia, if you’re looking for a good argument for allowing condoms and not prescription birth control, I’m bound to disappoint. I somehow missed the info that the district has been passing out condoms for so long. At the risk of sounding like a Read More...
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Emily, you genius! Now that is the way to warm Hillary up for the true swing voter: get her out there single again, dating, and vulnerable. (I could see her with Mitt Romney, but never mind.) She would lose none of benefit of having been Mrs. Bill Clinton, Read More...
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I have been gaga over the Sarkozys and I love the idea that Cecelia is a role model. We shouldn't demand more from our first spouses. We should demand less. Or nothing at all. A Hillary question from Rudy Giuliani. He said: "Honestly, in most respects, Read More...
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The National Women’s Law Center and the Oregon Health & Science University released a truly grim report on Wednesday. Women’s health care in the U.S. is unsatisfactory overall, and no state earned a “satisfactory” grade for women’s health. The two Read More...
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Rachael, your post on the decision of a Portland, Maine, middle school to allow students to get prescription birth control without parental notification was prescient. Everyone’s gone bonkers toady and O’Reilly is hardly even the most unhinged . (Best Read More...
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Regarding the quick dissolution of the Sarkozy marriage, a several decade melodrama -- this seems like something Hillary should be contemplating. When people really start envisioning both Clintons back in the White House, wouldn't it be better if instead Read More...
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Or at least appears to be , I guess that makes things easier for the Creation Museum . Now they only have to choose between Tancredo and Huckabee for their '08 endorsement. Read More...
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Personally, I try to follow the example of a very famous woman in politics, Margaret Thatcher, who never read what newspapers wrote about her, ever, in principle. Which was just as well, because it was usually nasty. My only objection in the early reviews Read More...
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The early reviews of XX Factor are in, and they’re ambivalent, to put it nicely. The complaint is mostly the concept. At Tapped, Dana Goldstein is "discouraged that another mainstream publication has put its feminist blogging in a separate space." At Read More...
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Soon after reading Amanda’s post on Susan Orr’s appointment to head the Office of Population Affairs—the office in the Health and Human Services Department that oversees family planning—I read that the school board in Portland, Maine, has—by an astounding Read More...
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The beleaguered federal office that oversees family planning services just got another boss hostile to birth control. Among the depressing details : Susan Orr, the new appointee, was formerly a Senior Director at the Family Research Council, a group that Read More...
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At today's confirmaton hearing for Michael Mukasey, Bush's pick for attorney general, Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked questions about a disturbing ruling Mukasey made as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York. Here are the facts (I just looked Read More...
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Women may be underrepresented in the sciences at the highest academic levels, but through high school, female students perform much better than their male counterparts. Ironically, one of the first journalists to draw attention to this fact is Hoff Sommers, Read More...
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College kids, I would say, are pretty thrilled to have controversial speakers, like Summers, who get useful debates going (and Dahlia, as you say, little kids love daddy playmates, and ignore puttering mothers). But at the risk of sounding like a schoolmarm—hey, Read More...
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Speaking of speaking out loud about gender differences, I wanted to post briefly on Emily’s terrific piece last week about playing with our kids . I’ve noticed the same phenomenon ‘round here: My husband can easily spend 90 straight minutes on the floor Read More...
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I agree that it’s foolish for UC Davis to rescind its invitation to Summers to speak—even if his comments were foolish and ill-informed , as I argued two years ago. But the problem with Christina Hoff Sommers’ piece—and the reason I don’t find it all Read More...
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But surely this was Sommers' point: How will we ever be able to talk about sex differences in an interesting way if we're not allowed to study them? If the subject is an academic taboo, then the same old cliches will just live on for another generation. Read More...
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Yes, Larry Summers should be able to speak at Davis. He's done his time (and lost his job). But I'm not ready to says he's a hero for telling it like it is about women and the sciences, which is what Sommers implies. During the fracas over his remarks Read More...
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