New York Times Editorial, May 19

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”

Forget Hallmark and Big Flora -- Mother's Day is (and always has been) for radicals:

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

Howe wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Charli Carpenter (h/t) & Robert Farley discuss FP's insta-notorious "swimsuit issue":

Related: Mona Eltahawy hits #nerdland to discuss her recent FP cover story on misogyny in the Muslim world, and address criticisms from Harvard prof Leila Ahmed:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Culturalising the problem of women’s rights diverts attention from the unequal gendered structures, as well as from the wider economic and political environment in which these developments are taking place.

According to Merry, “Blaming culture for the disadvantages faced by women, minorities, and other vulnerable groups is an appealing ideology for proponents of contemporary neoliberal globalisation. It blames the havoc wreaked by expansive capitalism and global conflicts on the culture of the other”.

Hence, the cultural authenticity discourse provides a perfect alibi for the traditional patriarchs to evade any responsibility to accommodate women’s rights claims; cultural interpretation of women’s subordination relieves rich countries of the responsibility for dispossessions caused by capitalism, neoliberalism, militarism, occupation and armed conflicts.

Christian Feminism

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

:D more at link, h/t Susie

Regular readers who followed our recent debates on "totalitarian agriculture" and on patriarchal tendencies might find this from 2010, on gender roles as determined by agricultural methods, interesting:

A recent draft paper by Alberto Alesina, Paola Giuliano, and Nathan Nunn takes a look at one hypothesis, originally advanced by Ester Boserup, to explain cross-cultural differences in the gendering of agriculture. Boserup proposed that cultures in which farming is done primarily by men tend to farm with plows, while those in which agriculture is done by women use other agricultural techniques. Furthermore, she argued that these two types of agrarian societies tend to differ systematically in other ways as well, particularly with respect to gender roles. In plow societies women tend to stay at home and tend to household tasks while men are out working in the fields, and in many cases they develop highly elaborated systems of gender role differentiation with men in a clearly dominant role. This has historically been the case especially in the Near East and most of Europe, as well as in other areas such as northern India. In places without plow agriculture, however, societies tend to have less rigid gender role definition and more flexibility in acceptable economic activity for women. This is the case in most of Africa, the Americas, and southern India. Strikingly, these differences in economic role for men and women in plow societies seem to persist even when societies industrialize: men take the manufacturing jobs outside the home instead of working in the fields, but women still stay at home rather than working. Very recently this has begun to change, especially in the wealthiest societies, but there is some evidence that the pattern has been surprisingly persistent.

The full paper is here (PDF).

David Grant | Washington | April 26

CSM - A new version of the Violence Against Women Act, the legislation that Democrats used as a backdrop to accuse Republicans of waging a "war on women," passed the Senate Thursday afternoon 68 to 31.

Fifteen Republicans joined every Democrat in voting for the measure. The passage reauthorizes a wide variety of services for abused women and men for five years.

"This violence must end," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota, one of the bill's main champions, on the Senate floor Thursday. "And so we all know that we can no longer stand and say it is someone else's problem. We can't let our own differences, minor that they may be on various provisions, get in the way."

Blake Hounshell, currently the managing editor of Foreign Policy, and once upon a time the blogger known as Praktike, has been all over the twitter machine the past few days hawking FP's SEX ISSUE!

Yes, sex sells, and yes, I read some of the articles. I was particularly disgusted at the illustrations of a nude woman with a burkha painted on her body. Yes, FP was selling articles about the sexploitation of women with, um, a woman's body. Whatta concept!

I thought about griping about it, but I've got beta lot on my plate right now, and, although that kind of blind and unthinking sexism continues to irritate me, decided not to take the time.

Which was just as well, because Charli Carpenter nails it. Required reading for the Foreign Policy editorial staff.

And I particularly like the graphic!

Many thanks to @dandrezner and @BulletinAtomic for tweeting and retweeting Carpenter's article.

Mona Eltahawy | The Middle East | May/June 2012

Foreign Policy - In "Distant View of a Minaret," the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband's repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, "as though purposely to deprive her." Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer -- so much more satisfying that she can't wait until the next prayer -- and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. "She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was," Rifaat writes.

In a crisp three-and-a-half pages, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it. They don't hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says.

Yes: They hate us. It must be said.

One benefit of my keeping tabs on a certain right-wing discussion board is that I occasionally gain insight into right wing memes that I would otherwise fail to understand.

This is the case for women's rights and the "GOP War on Women".

I was truly surprised by this reaction against the left's highlighting of GOP anti-women's rights.

However, I happen to know that the posters in question are not all simply shills or trolls, but some genuinely believe what they are posting, even if it might be conditioned by right-wing funded media.

Think Progress has charts for Equal Pay Day, "the day that women completed the extra 3.5 months of work they needed in order to make an equal amount to what men earned in 2011". But it's only really Equal pay day if you're a white or asian woman. While the average pay gap is 77 cents for every man’s dollar, if you're a black woman its 69 cents and if you're latina its only 60 cents.

Mark Swan | Toronto | April 3

The Catholic Register - Now that Ontario's highest court has found most laws in the country concerning prostitution are unconstitutional, people on all sides of the debate are urging parliament to act.

In a landmark ruling likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, the Ontario Court of Appeal rendered a decision on March 26 that legalizes brothels and allows prostitutes to hire protectors and other staff. Public soliciting and pimping remain illegal, but the court ruled that prostitutes have a constitutional right to work in safe environments.

The court suspended implementation of its decision for one year to give parliament time to amend the criminal code.

Is procreation immoral?

The New Yorker, By Elizabeth Kolbert, April 9

In 1832, Charles Knowlton, a doctor in Ashfield, Massachusetts, published a short book with a long title: “Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People, by a Physician.” Knowlton, who was thirty-one, was a “freethinker” and, by the standards of the Berkshires, an unusually adventurous soul. While attending the New Hampshire Medical Institute (now Dartmouth Medical School), he was too poor to pay for a dissecting class and so had liberated a corpse from a cemetery. For this, he was convicted of grave robbing and sentenced to sixty days in jail. In 1829, he wrote up his ideas about agnosticism in a tract and had a thousand copies printed at his own expense. Unable to find buyers in western Massachusetts, he took the copies to New York City, where he was arrested for peddling without a license.

In “Fruits of Philosophy,” Knowlton took up the subject of sex, or population growth, which, at the time, amounted to much the same thing. Like Thomas Malthus, whose work he cited, Knowlton was worried about the hazards of fertility. Using nineteenth-century birth rates, he projected that the number of people on the planet would double three times every century. Unlike Malthus, who saw no remedy except plague or abstinence, Knowlton believed that a more agreeable solution was at hand. What he called the “reproductive instinct” need not actually lead to reproduction. All that was required was some ingenuity. “Heaven has not only given us the capacity of greater enjoyment, but the talent of devising means to prevent the evils that are liable to arise therefrom; and it becomes us, ‘with thanksgiving, to make the most of them,’ ” he wrote.

The Independent, By Charlotte Rachael Proudman, April 2

Today I received another telephone call from a young Muslim woman, Nasrin, who pleaded with me to help her obtain an Islamic divorce. After fleeing a forced marriage characterised by rape and physical violence, Nasrin applied for an Islamic divorce from a Sharia council; that was almost 10 years ago now. Despite countless emails, letters and telephone calls to the Sharia council as well as joint mediation and reconciliation meetings, the Sharia council refuse to provide Nasrin with an Islamic divorce. Why? Because of Nasrin’s sex. An Imam at the Sharia council told Nasrin that her gender prevents her from unilaterally divorcing her husband, instead the Imam told her to return to her husband, perform her wifely duties and maintain the abusive marriage that she was forced into.

Having represented Muslim women pro bono at Sharia law bodies across the UK to obtain Islamic divorces, I am all too aware of the gender discriminatory experience many Muslim women suffer at some Sharia councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (‘Sharia law bodies’). Unfortunately their experiences have not been highlighted by the media. Instead some Sharia law bodies have been misrepresented by the media as being transparent, voluntary and operating in accordance with human rights and equality legislation. This is not the case.

James Gallagher | April 2

BBC - A cheap medical device can dramatically reduce the number of premature births in some at-risk women, according to a team of doctors in Spain.

Being born before 34 weeks of pregnancy is linked to a host of health problems.

The study, published in the Lancet, showed that using a "cervical pessary" reduced the rate in the at-risk group.

Kabul | March 28

BBC - Hundreds of Afghan women are in jail for "moral crimes", including running away and extra-marital sex, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

In a report, it said that women were punished for fleeing domestic abuse and violence while some rape victims were also imprisoned.

Sex outside marriage - even when the woman is forced - is considered adultery, another "moral crime".

The I Had to Run Away report was released in Kabul on Wednesday.

Daisy Grewal | March 13

Scientific American - In one experiment, just telling a man he would be observed by a female was enough to hurt his psychological performance.

David Mielach | March 22 | Business Daily

Women make better bosses. That’s the finding of a new survey, which found that women in management positions lead in a more democratic way, allow employees to participate in decision-making and establish interpersonal channels of communication.

[...]

Those interpersonal channels of communication facilitated increased communication between management and employees in companies with women in management positions. This has a twofold benefit for these organizations. First, these companies are able to make more well-informed decisions, since employee feedback will be utilized in the decision-making process.

The Nation, By JoAnn Wypijewski, March 21

I hate liberalism’s language of “choice.” I always have. Redolent of the marketplace, it reduces the most intimate aspects of existence, of women’s physical autonomy, to individualistic purchasing preferences. A sex life or a Subaru? A child or a cheeseburger? Life, death or liposuction? In that circumstance, capitalism’s only question is, Who pays and who profits? The state’s only question is, Who regulates and how much? If there is an upside to the right’s latest, seemingly loony and certainly grotesque multi-front assault on women, it is the clarion it sounds to humanists to take the high ground and ditch the anodyne talk of “a woman’s right to choose” for the weightier, fundamental assertion of “a woman’s right to be.”

Scott Gordon | Fort Worth, TX | March 20

NBCDFW.com - Fort Worth arson squad investigating

A man lit several firebombs outside the Fort Worth office of state Sen. Wendy Davis on Tuesday, startling two staff members who opened the door to find flames shooting in the air, the senator's spokesman said.

No one was injured, and Davis was not in the office at the time. An employee put out the fire with an extinguisher, said Anthony Spangler, the senator's spokesman.

Nora Fakim | Rabat | March 17

BBC - Several hundred women's rights activists have demonstrated outside Morocco's parliament to demand the repeal of a law on sexual violence.

Morocco's penal code allows a rapist to marry his victim if she is a minor as a way of avoiding prosecution.

A 16-year-old girl, Amina Filali, killed herself a week ago after being severely beaten during a forced marriage to her rapist.

(Note to my Agonist readers: Nobody Asked Me, But... is a regular weekly feature I post at my own blog Simply Left Behind as a whip-around on news stories you might have missed that I feel might have some future impact on the world. Sometimes, like this week, I'll do some in-depth analysis of an issue that throws a little light into the shadows.)

We on the left often chide Democrats for not being more aggressive in counterpunching the right-wing attempts to drag the country kicking and screaming back to the 19th Century. It is pretty annoying to watch President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and, to a lesser degree, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi placate and wheedle Republicans, all to no great benefits.

Spengler | Mar 12 | Asia Times

A Japanese government study that should have shaken the psychology profession to its shoelaces went through the news media with a mild degree of titillation last month. Almost a third of Japanese boys aged 16-10 and three-fifths of girls say that they have no interest in sex. That is daunting, for all the world's cultures have believed that women enjoy sex more than men, as the Greek seer Tiresias told the gods according to Ovid.

The hormones of late adolescence evidently rage in vain against some cultural barrier that makes young Japanese "despise" sexual relations, according to the Japan Family Planning Association's report [1]. The whole edifice of liberal social policy should have tumbled upon the news, which refutes Freud's premise that libido is the driving force in human character. For 60 years, the sexual revolution insisted that repressed desire is the root of all evil. It turns out that the ultimate victim of sexual revolution is sex itself.

What makes the Japanese hate sex? The same things that make a growing proportion of Americans hate sex. Joan Sewell's 2007 book I'd Rather Eat Chocolate became the manifesto of American women who don't like sex, hailed at the as "the next wild turn in the female sexual revolution" by Sandra Tsing Loh in The Atlantic Monthly [2].

Pharmaceutical companies are racing to market a pill to revive fading female libido, to no avail: women do not want to be sex objects, and a culture that objectifies women will make them hate sex, as I wrote in this space five years ago [3]. But the problem has gotten worse than I imagined it would.

Somedays Spengler is just confusing to read

Laurie Penny, aka Penny Red, has a call to arms in the UK's Independent for International Women's day, writing that women "have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean" and adding that "Politeness is a habit that what's left of the women's movement needs to grow out of".

Like the suffragettes and socialists who called the first International Women's Day over a century ago, women who believe in a better world are going to have to start thinking in deeds, not words. With women under attack financially, socially and sexually across the developed and developing world, with assaults on jobs, welfare, childcare, contraception and the right to choose, the time for polite conversation is over. It's time for anger. It's time for daring, direct action, big demands, big dreams. The men who still run the world from boardrooms and government offices have become too used to not being afraid of what women will do if we are attacked, used and exploited. We must make them afraid.

Deeds, not words. Fewer business lunches, more throwing punches. Of course, there will be consequences. Those large armed men aren't just there for decoration, and the suffragettes who had their breasts twisted and their bones broken in prison 101 years ago knew that full well. But they also knew what we must now begin to remember – that the consequences of staying quiet and ladylike are always far more serious.

Of course Laurie, as her sobriquet suggests, is a socialist of the militant kind. That's OK, so am I - and I'm just fine with her call to arms.

BI | Mar 8

International Women’s Day is about supporting and respecting women everywhere — in every corner of the globe, and in boardrooms and the home alike. The holiday is now celebrated in dozens of countries around the world, and with thousands of events. For more information, visit the International Women’s Day website.

UN - International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.

The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events: more

Emma Graham-Harrison | Kabul | Mar 6

The Guardian - Edicts released by Hamid Karzai issue repressive rules for women who, they declare, are subordinate to men

Women are subordinate to men, should not mix in work or education and must always have a male guardian when they travel, according to new guidelines from Afghanistan's top clerics which critics say are dangerously reminiscent of the Taliban era.

The edicts appeared in a statement that also encouraged insurgents to join peace talks, fuelling fears that efforts to negotiate an end to a decade of war, now gathering pace after years of false starts and dead ends, will come at a high cost to women.

"There is a link with what is happening all over the country with peace talks and the restrictions they want to put on women's rights," said Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi, who warned that the new rules were a "green light for Talibanisation".

The points agreed at a regular meeting of the Ulema Council of top clerics are not legally binding. But the statement detailing them was published by the president's office with no further comment, a move that has been taken as a tacit seal of approval.

"Ultimately, I don't see a way you can read it as not coming from (Hamid) Karzai," said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. "It's probably not an extreme position for the Ulema Council, but it's an extreme position for Karzai, and not compatible with the constitution, or Afghanistan's obligations under international law."

The clerics renounced the equality of men and women enshrined in the Afghan constitution, suggesting they consider the document that forms.