In Loving Memory

Katherine Hepburn

May 12, 1907 -

June 29, 2003

Katherine Hepburn has always been one of my all-time favorite actresses. She was beautiful, strong, hilarious, brave, and just about the best actress there ever was. Sadly, she died today at her home in Old Saybrook, CT, surrounded by friends and family. She was 96 years old.

Katherine Hepburn was born May 12, 1907, in Hartford, CT, where her father was a physician and her mother, Katherine Houghton Hepburn, was a suffragist and an early and militant supporter of birth control. Between 1932 and 1994, Hepburn starred in 53 films. She has been nominated for an Oscar 12 times, won 4 of them (for Morning Glory (33), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (67), The Lion in Winter (68), and On Golden Pond (81)), and won an Emmy for her made-for-tv movie Love Among the Ruins (75). A feat, by the way, which remains unmatched by any other actor or actress.

From her obituary in the Washington Post:

As a young Hollywood actress, Hepburn was often at odds with the major film studios, which disliked the fact that she would only accept the roles that suited her. She had an independent spirit that led some producers and directors to view her as "an ornery, opinionated snob." She never had a press agent, she often refused to cooperate with film studio publicists, and for years she did not grant media interviews.

If the bulb of a camera flashed from the audience when Hepburn was on the live stage, she would often stop the performance, deliver a sharp tongue-lashing to the miscreant and then begin the scene over again.

In her manner of dress, she was equally unconventional. Her customary attire was a turtleneck sweater, men's trousers and an odd black hat, and it often appeared that much of her clothing was 20 or 30 years old. The Council of Fashion Designers of America gave her an award in 1986 for demonstrating "what American fashion was all about even before any of us thought of designing it." Hepburn's response: "Imagine, the original bag lady getting an award for the way she dresses."

A physical fitness enthusiast, she often played tennis before breakfast, swam outdoors regularly, even in the winter, and whenever possible rode a bicycle instead of riding in a car. She was once the runner-up for the Connecticut women's golf championship.

She was often imperious, both on stage and off, but she could also be sensitive and considerate of others. In the summer of 1980, when "On Golden Pond," was being filmed at Big Squam Lake, N.H., she became concerned that the activity might disturb the region's regular summer residents.

One day she walked over to the cottage nearest to where the movie was being filmed. "I'm Katharine Hepburn. We're making a movie next door, and I hope we're not ruining your summer," she told the startled occupants.

Katherine Hepburn will be dearly missed!

How to stop baby rape

An acquaintance of mine from South Africa pointed out an article from a women's glossy mag that discussed the topical issue of "baby rape." Baby rape is frighteningly common in South Africa (and some other parts of Africa). Part of this is due to the myth (urban legend) that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS (another frighteningly common occurance in South Africa). Men began raping younger and younger girls (to ensure that they would be virgins), and it has become relatively common to rape baby girls as young as 6 months old (possibly even younger).

In the article, many "experts" were discussing possible solutions to this epidemic. In the midst of some great wisdom, one "solution" stuck out (and chilled me to the bone):

The solution to baby rape, according to Dr. Lorna Jacklin of the Teddy Bear Clinic for abused children, is to prevent it from happening in the first place. And this, she says, is achieved by working with mothers. She says that in all the cases of baby rape she's seen, the mothers either weren't ready for motherhood, or weren't coping with it very well. We have got to empower women to select when they are going to have babies and we have to support and educate them once they do have babies.

Now, I'm all for empowering women. I'm all for helping women select when and if they will have children. And I'm all for supporting and educating both the women and the children. But to pretend that this is a "solution" to ending baby rape is appalling. In the case, the more reasonable (and effective) solutions would including educating the men -- both that rape is WRONG and that it will not cure AIDS.

Once again, the responsibility for a man's greivous acts fall on the shoulders of women. [fume]

Gang rapists are "vigorous" and therefore "normal"

According to the BBC, during a debate about Japan's declining birthrate, Seiichi Ota, a lawmaker with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said that at least gang rapists had a healthy appetite for sex and that "[g]ang rape shows the people who do it are still vigorous, and that is OK. I think that might make them close to normal."

After female legislators issued a joint statement on Friday condemning the remarks as an insult to all women, as well as many other legislators speaking out against the comments, Ota was reprimanded by LDP secretary-general Taku Yamasaki.

After the reprimand, Ota told reporters on Friday that he deeply regretted the "inappropriate, exaggerated expression" and that that his comments "needed to be considered in context."

What context could there possibly be for making this sort of statement acceptable? Well, I can't think of any, but according to him, the context was as follows:

The remarks came as the veteran politician attributed the country's declining population to a lack of courage among Japanese men to enter into married life, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.

Asked by the debate's moderator whether this explained the behaviour of five college students who were arrested earlier this month for gang raping a peer, Mr Ota said that rape showed a healthy attitude.

"I know I'll get in trouble for saying that, though," he reportedly added.

He now says that he "wanted to add that rape is a serious crime that should be punished severely." But, even if he had added that, would that have changed the offensiveness of his statement? Not even close. As Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pointed out: "Rape is an atrocious act of cowardice and has nothing to do with virile qualities." He couldn't be more right. Rape -- particularly gang rape is not about sexual virile-ness, it's about power, control, and entitlement. And to take it a bit further:

Yasuyuki Takai, vice chairman of the Japan Federation of Bar Association's committee on victim support, said Mr Ota's remarks were indicative of Japanese society's passive attitude to rape, which often goes unreported.

"It shows that in Japan, rape is not thought of enough as an awful act... Japan's social views against incidents of rape need to be made more strict," Mr Takai told the French news agency AFP.

Prison sentences for rape in Japan range from two to 15 years, but it is unusual for a sentence to be more than five years.

Chocolate: The Gendered Candy

In one of the episodes of Farscape (from the first season) that we watched last night, Aeryn and John were discussing diseases. After John tells Aeryn about all the horrors of disease and death on Earth, Aeryn asks why he wants to go back there. He says, "you don't have chocolate."

Of course, everyone laughed -- this is a chocolate-loving household (well, for the most part -- I'm only a mild fan of the stuff). But I found it interesting that a guy on TV would say something like that. Now, I know a lot of men who like chocolate (as I said, this is a chocolate-loving household), but it's pretty rare to hear a man talk about chocolate in the media. It's usually women who are portrayed as loving chocolate -- often even "needing" and "obsessing" over chocolate.

This gendering of food couldn't be more evident than in two ad campaigns for different brands of chocolate bars that appeared in the UK about a year ago.

In an article for The F-Word: Young UK Feminism, Catherine Redfern compares these two advertising campaigns.

In an ad for Fox's Echo chocolate bars:

Two, slightly nervous, middle-aged men with a look of desperation or weary resignation (presumably gained through years of nagging), sit outside what seems to be a pub, facing the camera. "Can you imagine a world without chocolate?" One of them says, in slow, serious, incredulous tones. "Can you imagine what our lives would be like?" There then follows a montage of images of women rampaging through the streets with riot police holding them back, and women screaming at cowed, silent men, in their homes. "Society as we know it would break down." comments the bloke, in awed, hushed tones. The last but one shot shows a large crowd of serious, grateful men raising their glasses to the camera. "That's why the men of the world thank you, Fox's, for putting extra chocolate in Echo" (or words to that effect). "...thank you for keeping our world sane." Just as the ad ends, there is a shot of a bloke sitting in an armchair at home with a screaming woman swinging a vacuum cleaner, about to bring it crashing down on his unsupecting head. The image cuts off before it smashes down, of course.

Redfern goes on to question how this line of thought came to pass (and it's certainly not the first time we've seen this sort of thinking on TV):

Where did this idea come from that without chocolate, women would literally break down and riot in the streets? It's like some kind of addictive drug! Is it referring to the supposed chocolate-PMT connection? Do women have some deep biological need for chocolate that men just don't have? Why is chocolate being portrayed as some opiate of the misses, keeping us sweet, keeping us docile, keeping us 'sane'? Women literally cannot survive without chocolate, the ad is saying. Chocolate keeps us docile and uncomplaining enough to do domestic chores. Women will put up with more crap if we have chocolate to take away the pain. After all, the woman in the final scene is in the middle of vacuuming while the bloke sits down in front of the tv. No wonder she's mad.

In contrast to the idea that chocolate is "feminine," Nestle's Yorkie candy bar launched a campaign April 1, 2002 trying to turn chocolate (at least, their chocolate) "masculine."

The tv ads show women attempting to purchase the chunky chocolate bar - but the only way they can do this is by glueing on fake beards, dressing up as builders with hard hats, and swaggering into corner shops asking (in deep, gruff, fake-male voice) for a "Yorkie please." In one ad, the large, bearded, super-gruff male shopkeeper 'tests' the woman to prove she is a man, by quizzing her on stereotypically male questions, thrusting a fake spider in her face to see if she screams, and so on. He finally hands the bar over, but when he tells her [that] it really highlights the blue in her eyes, she gasps "really?" and he snatches the Yorkie out of her hands and bites off a huge, masculine chunk in one go.

...

chocolate isn't a pseudo-orgasmic experience for the men who eat Yorkie, of course. It's a re-affirmation of their manhood. The Yorkie ads, on tv and posters, used the slogans "It's not for girls", "don't feed the birds", "not available in pink" and "King size, not Queen size." Interestingly, the campaign even affected the design of the bar itself, seemingly intended to literally stop women buying the bar in the real world. The "O" in Yorkie has been altered into a "no go" road sign, with a line cutting through a woman symbol. The bar also has the phrase "not for girls" on it.

You can see a sample of the ad campaign (if you have Adobe Acrobat) here.

The "top ten" lists aren't very clear, but apparently they say:

Top Ten Things Women Can't Do:
-Make a Decision.
-Watch Football Without Talking.
-Drive in a Straight Line.
-Use Ten Words When a Hundred Will Do.
-Open a Can Unaided.
-Use a Urinal.
-Own a Pet Spider.
-Speak on the Phone for Less than 15 Minutes.
-Understand Cricket.
-Buy a Yorkie.

Top Ten Reasons to be a Bloke
-One Mood- All the Time.
-You Can Goto the Bathroom by Yourself.
-You Get to Buy Gadgets.
-You Don't Have to Clean Your Flat Before the
Cleaner Comes.
-Mechanics Don't Lie to You.
-You Can Change a Plug.
-Grey Hair Adds to Your Sex Appeal.
-The First Thing You Try On in a Shop Fits You.
-You Can Read Maps.
-You Get to Eat a Yorkie.

A year later, Nestle released a new temporary campaign, the "very limited edition" Yorkie bar -- in a pink wrapper, for "those sacred girls who, against their female instinct, can be 'BLOKEY' enough to indulge in the UK's chunkiest chocolate bar!" If you didn't get yours already, though, you're too late -- they were only available in February and March.

As Redfern says,

What a weird world we live in, when a simple foodstuff can have such far-reaching implications. The choice is yours - buy Yorkie, and you are not buying chocolate, you're buying a cliched concept of 'masculinity.' Or buy Echo, and by the looks of the ad, you're buying some kind of numbing, depressant, class B drug.

Forget the children...Leave no BUSINESS behind

From the New York Times

The White House today defended the decision of Congressional negotiators to deny millions of minimum-wage families the increased child tax credit, saying the new tax law was intended to help people who pay taxes, not those who are too poor to pay.

Democrats, however, seized on the decision as an illustration of what they called the essential unfairness of legislation that provides most of its benefits to the wealthy. They promised to propose a bill that would extend the increased credit to those denied it: most families earning from $10,500 to $26,625. The $3.5 billion measure could embarrass Republicans if they chose to vote against it.

"While the Republican tax break leaves no business behind, it leaves behind millions of children from working-poor families," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. "Faced with a choice between giving a tax break to an elite few or helping millions of working families, the Republicans once again chose to help their wealthy friends."

...

[Ari Fleisher] said the bill would wipe out all tax liability for three million taxpayers. Bob McIntyre, director of the liberal research group Citizens for Tax Justice, agreed with that calculation, mainly because the increase in the child tax credit, to $1,000 a child from $600, will help families who earn $26,625 to about $40,000. But most of those earning less do not qualify for the $400-a-child checks that are being mailed this summer to many other families, because Republican negotiators, seeking to fit other tax cuts into the $350 billion bill, dropped a Senate provision.

That provision would have changed the child credit formula to allow families earning just above the minimum wage to get refunds of all or part of the $400.

...

Democrats and some moderate Republicans, however, argued that it was essentially unfair to give the child tax credit to most middle-income families but not to those lower on the scale. (The wealthiest taxpayers do not benefit from the child credit, which phases out at higher incomes.) Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, said the lack of a benefit to minimum-wage families was one of the reasons she voted against the bill.

"This ill-founded decision creates a two-tier system under the child tax credit, penalizing low-income working families who need the help most," Ms. Snowe said. "Not only is this unfair, but it further undermines the stimulus portion of the child credit," since it is low- income people who would be most likely to spend the refund.

In another article on the subject, from Common Dreams:

"I don't know why they would cut that out of the bill," said Senator Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat who persuaded the full Senate to send the credit to many more low income families before the provision was dropped in conference. "These are the people who need it the most and who will spend it the most. These are the people who buy the blue jeans and the detergent and who will stimulate the economy with their spending."

Ms. Lincoln noted that nearly half of all taxpayers in her state had adjusted gross incomes that were less than $20,000.

Families with incomes lower than $10,500 will also not receive the refund checks. But under the 2001 tax revision, they would not have been eligible for either the $600 or the $1,000 credits because they do not pay federal taxes. Proposals to give them the credits failed on the House and Senate floors on party-line votes.

...

Several centrist senators worked hard to make the child credit fully refundable for all low income families, and the full Senate voted this month to include a provision that would have included the minimum-wage families. But the provision was dropped in the House- Senate conference, where tax writers spent days trying to cram many tax cuts - most prominently, cuts in the taxes on stock dividends and capital gains - into a bill that the Senate said could not be larger than $350 billion.

...

But Democrats and children's advocacy groups said the Republican demand for large cuts in the dividend tax, which they said benefits primarily wealthy taxpayers, pushed away the credit from low income families.

"If we were going to have a tax cut to give $1,000 to all these other kids, there's no reason not to include these kids, too," said David Harris, president of the Children's Research and Education Institute. "Their families are working and playing by the rules and are left out, though it would not have cost too much to include them."

...

The gap in the number of families who receive the child credit occurs because of how the formula was arranged in 2001. Congress decided then to give refunds of the credit to low income families, but just to a maximum of 10 percent of the amount they made over $10,000, or a refund of $600, whichever was lower. The $10,000 amount was indexed to inflation and is now $10,500.

When the credit was raised to $1,000, many families could not qualify for the extra amount, because the 10 percent maximum still limited them. Ms. Lincoln proposed raising the formula to 15 percent, which would have covered the increase in the credit for most of those families. Her proposal made it through the Senate Finance Committee, but later she voted against the full cut.

Because her vote and those of other supporters were not necessary for final passage, Republicans knew they could drop the provision without hurting the bill's chances in the Senate.

"I guess this shows us what our priorities are," Ms. Lincoln said. "I think this tax bill is very irresponsible in the way it treats families."

Alas, Buffy

Before the final Buffy airs (well, "before" for us west coasters -- and we're the ones that count, right? :-p ), I wanted to post this commentary comparing the criticisms of Buffy to criticisms of women. I first read it over on the Empowering Women discussion board, but the original appeared on a Buffy board (I'm not sure which one).

Criticisms of Buffy/Criticisms of Women

by Miranda aka Catte

I've been noticing that a lot of the things that have been most criticisized about Buffy can be extrapolated to areas that society, and especially patriarchy, criticisizes about women as a whole.

Buffy is seen as controlling, bitchy, bossy, etc. while Spike's strength is enjoyed if not reveled in. I don't know of anyone who was unhappy when he reclaimed his duster...even if we all wondered how the heck it got in the basement.

The consensus is that it's ok for women to be strong as long as they have the proper attitude about it. If that doesn't happen, the strength doesn't count. Men, otoh, who are nurturing/caring, are seen as weak. Most prefer Angelus to Angel and would rather Spike was strong than vulnerable.

This carries over into the area of sexual aggression. Buffy is seen as too pushy, sexually, but while everyone raves over the kitchen door scene in Gone, what was that if not aggression from Spike? Everyone liked that he reclaimed his manhood and stood up to Buffy, the 'bad' woman and put her in her place.

The response that we're turned off because Buffy doesn't have the correct feelings for Spike doesn't really hold water because quite a few people enjoyed his picking up that college girl in Sleeper. I'd also argue that there were a boatload of wrong feelings in the DT balcony scene, but almost everyone except me, really, really liked it. Bottom line, sexual aggression is ok in men, not women.

I see a lot of criticism over Buffy's neglect of Dawn last year. This extrapolates to criticism of women we hear about who have children and who work full time. They are seen as bad mothers, even if the work is necessary to put food on the table. God help them if they just WANT to work. They're obviously evil. If something happens to the children, even if it's something done to them by someone else -- babysitter, day care worker, etc. -- the mother is blamed for not being there.

I didn't see the same criticism of Angel for working and Connor was an infant as opposed to Dawn's teenager. Connor is left with Lorne and sent off with Wesley as Dawn was left under Willow's supervision. Everyone was horrified when Buffy wanted Giles to talk to Dawn, but nobody worried about it when Cordelia was able to semi-calm Connor. Of course, by doing that, Cordelia stepped into her proper role of mother and nurturer instead of stepping out as Buffy did.

Faith and Lilah also don't fill their proper roles, but they get around that because they fill the stereotype of the 'bad' girl. She's the sexy one who breaks the taboos, the one you don't take home to mother. No one EXPECTS her to look after the children.

Still, Faith gets around all that by having a bad childhood. Bad things happened to her and made her a bad person. She's only waiting to be saved by the right man. And she is. Angel sweeps her on to his white horse and sets her soul on the road to redemption. There is the general idea that Faith will step into her proper role any time now. This also happens with Gwen and Kate on AtS.

Lilah on the other hand, refuses to be saved. She walked into her situation eyes wide open, enjoys every minute of it, and takes the consequences without whining. Wes, despite his best efforts, doesn't change her. Wes, and and the rest of us, kept thinking there had to be some kind of reason for Lilah to have made the choices she did, but if there is, we aren't privy to it.

No one really saves Buffy either. There's the occasional punch or strength-giving mind-meld, but in the end, she rescues herself. She makes the decision to choose the world of Sunnydale over the world of the clinic. She hauls herself out of her own grave -- twice. She faces Caleb.

Of course, Buffy tries to make up for saving herself by feeling guilty about not fulfilling her proper role. She worries that there's something wrong with her because she doesn't connect. All the good she does, all the lives she's saved don't count, because she doesn't have the right kind of feelings. She tries to blame it on being the Slayer, but she'd be much happier if she faced that maybe she's just not that kind of person and that it's ok.

BtVS was always supposed to be about breaking stereotypes. The fragile blond girl, normally the victim, is the hero. It seems some stereotypes are harder to break than others, and those who break them aren't as easily forgiven.

Not only does Buffy get to be blamed for her own character flaws - aggression and being a loner, although those traits seem to be ok when it's Angel who has them - she gets the blame for everyone else's actions as well.

Riley cheats because Buffy is a bad girlfriend. They used every cliche in the book with this one except 'she doesn't understand me,' and I kept waiting for it.

Spike initially develops an obsessive crush because Buffy 'led him on'. Their later relationship problems are all her fault, although Spike is free to leave at any time, and Buffy never lies about what they are doing. It culminates in the rape attempt, which is also made to be her fault. Here, the only line left out on the show was 'the bitch asked for it,' and it's a line I heard on some boards.

She's also faulted for Willow and Dawn's problems, although Willow, at least, is an adult, and there were other people on the scene at the time.

The main problem with all this is that Buffy accepts it as her due. She feels that what happened to Riley, Spike, Willow, and Dawn, is indeed her fault. Her guilt over wishing herself free of a burden or two sends her into catatonia not once, but twice.

Xander reaches a point where he refuses to take any more blame for Anya's actions. It would be nice if Buffy could do the same. I'd like to ship Lilah over to Sunnydale to run a few conscious-ness raising sessions.

Thank you to Catte for writing this brilliant analysis of women's role in society and how that is portrayed in Buffy (and thanks for letting me post it here).

Where are the feminists?

Seems to me that this question is asked nearly as much as the question "Is Feminism Dead?". In the vast majority of cases, these questions are asked not out of sincerity, but as a way to bash feminists. In addition, these questions are usually asked out of ignorance, not out of some special knowledge of what feminists are and are not focusing on. Amp, himself, recently exposed the ignorance of one person asking this sort of question.

Thanks to an e-mail from Stefanie Murray, I found yet another egregious example of this.

In a New York Times editorial, Nicholas D. Kristof described the tragedy of "a condition almost unknown in the West but indescribably hideous for millions of sufferers in the poorest countries in the world" known as obstetric fistulas. Indeed, this is a widespread tragedy which most of the Western world knows very little about, and it's admirable that he would take the time to write about it, as well as acknowledge the work of Dr. Catherine Hamlin, an Australian gynecologist who has helped tens of thousands of women with this condition.

Unfortunately, he goes on to add:

I know why most African governments have done nothing to help fistula sufferers: those women are the poorest, most stigmatized, voiceless people on the continent. But since it is difficult to imagine a more important women's issue in the third world than maternal health, I don't understand why most feminist organizations in the West have never shown interest in these women either.

Perhaps it's because Westerners can't conceive of the horror of obstetric fistulas (Americans haven't commonly suffered fistulas since the 19th century, when a fistula hospital stood on the site of today's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan). Or perhaps the issue doesn't galvanize women's groups because fistulas relate to a traditional child-bearing role.

One has to wonder if the author is deliberately manipulating the facts, or really is that ignorant of what American feminists are and are not doing.

I mean, in his own article, he points out the efforts of not only UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund), but also of the American women attempting to help raise the $34 million in U.S. funds for UNFPA that Bush cut in a temper tantrum over abortions in China. But he ignored other organizations, like the Feminist Majority Foundation or any of the thousands of other organizations and individual women working to prevent not only this particular tragedy, but similar tragedies -- not to mention the causes of this and similar tragedies.

Ironically, it wasn't feminists, but rather conservatives, who were arguing against the issue of maternal mortality and the underlying causes of such a thing. And here's the thing -- the underlying causes of and solutions for maternal mortality are the exact same underlying causes of obstetric fistula: poverty, lack of education, childbearing at too early an age, early or closely spaced childbearing, and lack of medical care.

Now, I will admit that not nearly enough people -- feminists and non-feminists alike -- are paying attention to all of these issues. But, when one looks at who is trying to work on the issues, one will see that the vast majority of these people are feminists, while the ones working against it are conservatives. Similarly, the lack of information cannot be blamed on feminists (as they are the ones, more often, trying to spread the word), but rather the conservative media who ignore the voices of feminists and spend far too much playing PR agents for the US military and government.

Update: Trish Wilson and Body and Soul have also written comments on Kristof.