Where did we go?
Well, in late 2008, I’d tried to renew our former domain name shortly before it expired but I encountered some technical difficulties and was unable to complete the transaction. I notified the domain registrar via their tech support contact form and waited to hear back. By the time they got back to me, the domain name had expired and been sold to a third party who wanted me to buy it back from domain name purgatory for a large sum of money.
Not taking kindly to extortion, I contacted the domain registrar (a large company who shall remain unnamed even though I think they’re horrible, evil people) again and plead our case but they refused to step in and right this wrong.
In the interim, someone else bought the domain name and threw up a hideous and very poorly written web site using our domain name. Regretfully, anyone still displaying our button continues to send them traffic to this day. Grrrr!
After stewing over this for well over a year and trying to think of ways to get the name back, I finally decided to just move our old content to a new domain and here we are!
There were a few database glitches that were out of our control so a lot of posts are missing images and there may even be a few posts gone—I can’t tell for sure—but nonetheless, we are BACK!
I’m not sure what direction I want to take Moms Speak Up but I’m leaning towards having an open posting format where anyone can submit a post through a form and it will be posted, as a post, immediately. This will allow anyone who has something to say (spammers notwithstanding) to say it whenever they feel like it without going through all the hassle of setting up a guest post or committing to a permanent writers position.
Regardless of what I decide to do with the site, my original desire to get the content back up has been fulfilled and all the moms who have spoken up will continue to be heard!
Have you seen the stories about the Pornification of Halloween with alarming photos of girls who look more like porn fantasies than girls playing dress up?
I wrote one of them last year.
That was before I read So Sexy So Soon by Diane E. Levin, Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne Ed.D. which clearly explained that girls haven’t become hyper-sexualized at all. Marketers and Advertisers have become hyper-sexualized in an attempt to exploit children’s inherent innocent sexuality for profit. Continue reading →
Back in mid-July, I wrote about a shocking proposal the Bush Administration wanted the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement.
I wrote:
In other women’s rights trampling, the Bush Administration is doing the quick step to achieve as many of its oppressive agenda points as possible before the President’s term ends.
This week’s big move?
Removing the blockade and letting anti-choice activists storm the health care castle in order to not only block women from getting abortions that are, for the record, still legal, but also could classify contraception products as abortions and enable “objectors” to prevent women from accessing those too. They call it “preventing discrimination” in hiring on the basis of “religious belief” but it’s clear—after reading all 39 pages of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed rule document—what it really is: trying to cut the legs out from under Roe v. Wade.
What does the document say? (Click here to read the complete PDF, provided courtesy of RH Reality Check.)
I then went on to summarize and wrote:
Another good question is why the 39 page HHS document provides no measures for patient protection, or a guarantee that if one health care practitioner refuses to provide requested health care, another who will provide it will be made available to the patient.
Clearly the goal is to force health care to hire anti-choice people who will put their own beliefs and interests above the patients’ and who will block access to basic legal health care. Good medicine and good health care is not the goal. Choking the religious rights’ anti-choice agenda down patients’ throats is.
It’s shocking that HHS, which is supposed to be dedicated to providing better health services to people in the US, would instead put a religious belief, which is a matter of opinion, above health care, which is a matter of scientific fact and law. Does it seem that this new rules proposal is achieving the HHS goals?
Let’s not be naive. This is not about protecting fundamental freedom of belief. This is not about protecting people from discrimination. This is patently and clearly—and if you don’t believe me, go read each of the articles I linked to and the original document from HHS—about putting anti-choice health care workers into protected positions so that they may block women’s access to legal and necessary reproductive health care.
My friend, the impressive Cynthia Samuels, recently reminded me about this issue and the hard work many women and groups are doing to protect women’s right to make choices about reproduction and their bodies.
Her letter speaks very plainly and explains this issue straightforwardly—including why you need to care, even if you do not believe in abortion:
Continue reading →
I love Lisa Belkin for getting the issues on the table, the very public table, even if she can raise my hackles. This time, she wrote a post titled The Parents Vote on her Motherlode blog at the New York Times. In it, it is clear that she hasn’t met us. She sums up us parents as voters this way:
Ask people with children what most shapes their worldview, and being a parent would likely be high on the list. And yet we don’t make our political decisions as “parents,” don’t base our vote on the candidates views of how to help families juggle life and work, don’t see parents as an interest group.
Uh, maybe we should email her a link to Moms Speak Up? Or MOMocrats? Or Activistas? Or PunditMom?
She points out, as Moms Rising has been doing recently, that the three debates thus far have not included one single specifically work-family question. Seems to reinforce the premise that we parents don’t vote as parents, but rather as our other (ha!) selves. Continue reading →
The AP reports that on the cover of W magazine, Angelina Jolie may be breastfeeding. The AP further reports that this cover follows the equally controversial People magazine shoot where Jolie wore a white nursing bra under her tank top. Perhaps, it would have been less newsworthy had she been wearing a black nursing bra.
While reading this little piece, I squinted my eyes thinking that surely this is not the story I am reading. Surely, our society has accepted that breastfeeding is natural and the preferred way to nourish our infants.
At least twice, the AP used the word “apparent” in referring to Jolie’s breastfeeding. So, here is my question. Is the big news that she might be breastfeeding or that she is actually breastfeeding? Or is the big news that this is a news story at all?
Here in Oregon, we’re working hard to make paid family leave a reality, but it’s (sadly) an uphill battle. We started a grassroots group called Parents for Paid Leave this past Spring and landed ourselves in an international documentary TV piece on the need for this kind of family support program. It highlights our work to pass a bill and does a good job of showing how very far behind the U.S. lags in this area. Check it out. It’s compelling – plus I’m in it!
What’s going on with paid family leave in your state? The National Partnership for Women & Families has a great summary of state and local action on paid family and medical leave for 2008. In our experience, bringing the grassroots energy and perspective to the table is a critical part of enacting strong legislation that really works for families. So jump in!
Photo courtest of Sarah Gilbert, aka cafemama.
It’s no secret that chemicals cross the placenta. But it’s outrageous that fetuses in this country are born with 267 chemicals in their bodies. 267. Learn more by watching this compelling video by the Environmental Working Group. Some call it “An Inconvenient Truth” for toxic chemicals and health. It’s powerful, and worth every minute of your time to watch it.
Interested in knowing more? Getting involved? Visit the group’s ‘For Parents‘ web page for some great tips on reducing your family’s exposure to toxic chemicals. It doesn’t have to be hard.
ps – When I’m not writing for Moms Speak Up and Activistas, I work for EWG, so buyer beware.
by Ann Bibby
As my husband was preparing the oatmeal for breakfast this morning, he wondered idly how a person would go about converting grain into oatmeal for cooking. Not that we are worried about where our next meal is coming from, but as he related this story to me later, I reminded him that there have been more than a few instances of bare grocery shelves in our neck of Canada since early summer. Times have arisen when I wasn’t able to buy soy cheese or whole grain bread or even bagels because the store was waiting on a truck to arrive – sometimes for a week or longer.
Even now there are signs that food shortages are not just something that happen in third world countries. Some staples of our diet, veggie ground chicken for instance, haven’t been available for months and no one knows when – or if – we will see it again.
Prices are higher and still rising, and despite the fact that the decline in U.S. gasoline consumption is dropping every month, we are still paying close to $5 Canadian for a gallon of the stuff up here.
We consider ourselves fortunate to not be in the U.S. My husband had almost taken a transfer to the Houston branch of his company about six months ago. But distance from the States is not insulation from the downward spiraling economy.
Credit is tightening. The housing market is bottoming. Jobs are still available but fewer and fewer are seeking unskilled labor. Prices are climbing. It’s hard not to wonder if this isn’t the beginning of a depression as great as that one of yore. You remember, that big one back in 1929. The one we read about in school.
And that’s kind of the problem. We don’t remember. We only read about it in school. Continue reading →
Posted in Corporations, Politics, Social Justice, WTF?, Working Families
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Tagged bank failures, Barbara Kiviat, credit crunch, great depression, grons, James Knustler, Matthew Simmeconomic bailout
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“Kids close your eyes!”
How many times do you find yourself trying to protect your children from harmful and destructive images while watching family television?
Two years ago, while watching television, I was assaulted with an image of a woman wearing a see-through nightgown, nipples protruding and visible, erotic soft lighting, floating in a bathtub. It was intentionally erotic, except that she had been violently and bloodily murdered and this erotic woman was, in fact, dead.
“What the heck is going on?” I thought. “Why are my children and I being subjected to this kind of sexually violent imagery in a commercial?”
So, I wrote the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission used to be the people who governed our airwaves. They used to control when and what was allowed to air during times when children were expected to be viewing television. Remember when they wouldn’t let radio stations play George Michael’s, I Want Your Sex?
Many months later they wrote back.
“Each network or television station has control over what it airs during commercials. You’ll have to write each network to complain about every commercial you feel is inappropriate,” they informed me.
“What? Who made that stupid rule?” I wanted to know. Continue reading →
Posted in Advertising, Boys, Call to Action, Children, Girls, Media
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Tagged Advertising, blog fabulous, empowering girls, Girls, marketing, mothers, Politics, sexualization of girls, so sioux me, tracee sioux
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Aaaaaand….here we go with Canadian election madness.
A consortium of television networks has once again decided not to let the Green Party participate in the nationally televised debates for this election.
I call bullshit.
The consortium announced on Monday (as reported at the National Post):
Three parties opposed the Greens inclusion in the debate, the consortium said in a news release, “and it became clear that if the Green party were included, there would be no leaders’ debates.”
(Three parties, meaning everyone but the Liberals, I should add.) The Green Party has a lot of support in Canada, and it deserves to be heard by the same audience as the other three major parties, as well as the Bloc Quebecois. Over 660,000 Canadians voted for this party in the last federal election. Does it sound right to you that they are being excluded?
I want to hear Elizabeth May take on Harper and Dion and Layton…she’s earned the right. It’s undemocratic to shut her out.
If you agree, head on over to Demand Democratic Debates, a site the Green Party has set up to allow Canadians to join in their fight to participate in the nationally televised debates. The petition will be sent to the presidents of the major Canadian networks, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. There you can sign a petition demanding Ms. May be heard at the debates. There’s also a section for bloggers, where you can grab a badge to help the Green Party’s efforts.
(For a concise run-down of where each party stands with respect to environmental issues, head on over to BlogHers Act Canada to read my post, Go Green or Go Home: Canadian Election 2008.)
(Cross-posted at Assertagirl.)
