The XX Factor

Childbirth Becomes an Interactive Experience

2009-11-09T20:41:00Z

Over the summer, Sara Morishige Williams, the wife of the CEO of Twitter, Tweeted while giving birth. A Minnesota woman named Lynsee has taken the natal overshare to the next level: she broadcast video of herself giving birth on a local social networking site called MomsLikeMe , and interacted with viwers while she was in labor. 23-year-old Lynsee, who would not give out her last name in order to protect her privacy (which apparently was not an issue when she decided to push out a person in front...(read more)

Those Who Oppose Abortions Should Not Have to Pay For Them

2009-11-09T19:47:00Z

Emily and Meredith , you’ll be completely unsurprised to hear that I greeted the passage of the Stupak amendment with more of a cheer than a groan. However unfair it might be that well-off women have more access to abortion than low-income women, the solution should not be to compel those who are morally opposed to abortion to pay for them with their tax dollars. Just because the government recognizes a right to something does not mean that the government must also provide for it. If you can indulge...(read more)

Dispatch from the FLDS Polygamist's Trial: What Does It Mean To Be a Willing Child Bride?

2009-11-09T16:20:00Z

A guest post from DoubleX writer Sonia Smith: For the past two weeks, I’ve been camped out in a west Texas courtroom watching the trial of fundamentalist Mormon polygamist Raymond Merril Jessop unfold. Sentencing begins today, and Jessop could face up to 20 years in prison for impregnating his underage “celestial” wife in 2004. The victim, 16 at the time of the sexual assault, never took the stand, and all the evidence in the case seemed to indicate that she was Jessop’s willing bride. But what does...(read more)

The GOP Must Choose Between Sexism and Women

2009-11-09T15:31:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte: Meredith Shiner and Glenn Thrush at Politico ask the question: Why does the GOP have a "woman problem"—i.e., a problem recruiting female candidates? This should be one of those simple answers to stupid questions situations, because the easy answer is that the Republican party has become the clearinghouse for straight white men angry that they have to share a little power with everyone else . Running too many women, especially women who don't play sexpot...(read more)

Stupak's Abortion Amendment: Dividing Women Between Haves and Have-Nots

2009-11-09T14:54:00Z

Since the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which barred federally funded Medicaid from paying for abortions, the whittling-away of reproductive rights has almost always affected poor women much more than better-off women. We have in this country a right to abortion that’s relatively easy to access if 1) you can pay for it, and 2) you live outside the large mostly rural swaths of fly-over country where abortion clinics are vanishingly rare. The geographic gaps ( here's a map ) come back to affordability, too....(read more)

Stupak Amendment Makes Women Choose Between Abortion and Health Care

2009-11-08T03:07:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Meredith Simons: Remember those conservatives who don't want the government interfering in health care plans? Right, well, it turns out what they meant was they don't want the government interfering in health care plans, except when it comes to abortion. At that point, the government can interfere to its heart's content. And it looks the government will, in fact, interfere, because in a bid to win pro-life Democrats' votes for the health care reform bill, Democratic leaders...(read more)

More Kids Equals More Happiness?

2009-11-06T18:29:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Bonnie Rochman: Well, fire up your engines, ladies, because now there’s a new bit of research supporting a third conclusion: that being married with children is the key to happiness . In contrast to previous research that indicates an inverse relationship between satisfaction and number of children, this particular study, which tracked 10,000 British households over 15 years, found that the more kids you have, the happier you are. I think that would come as news to those...(read more)

Sesame Street Turns 40, and My Kids Aren't Staying Tuned

2009-11-06T17:03:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer KJ Dell'Antonia: I admit it--I wanted my kids to watch Sesame Street because I knew it was at worst harmless, and at best educational--although I've never believed watching TV could make kids smarter , I'm willing to accept that it can teach them to recognize a rectangle. But from the first, it held little interest for them. My oldest preferred Baby Einstein, although with proper maneuvering, I could get in a shower during "Elmo's World"--although not necessarily without...(read more)

The Cute-ocalypse is Coming

2009-11-05T21:48:00Z

Like Lauren, I enjoyed Jim Windolf's insightful attack on cute culture, but I find the otters-holding-hands/Iraq War connection to be a bit of a stretch. Windolf suggests that we're asking for forgiveness through penitential offerings of cuteness, but it's not my impression that most Americans think we need to be forgiven. Maybe popular cuteness is intended "as some sort of correction" to our new status as invaders, but that presupposes a level of remorse I don't really see. Which is not to say cuteness...(read more)

The Dangers of the Cute-R-Net

2009-11-05T17:51:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans: Several times a week I walk by the marketing section of my office and see a group of grown men and women in their business-casual attire standing over someone’s computer screen giggling and cooing. Almost daily, I get an e-mail entitled, “SO CUTE I WANTZ TO DIE” or “AHHHHHHZZ! CUTEGASM!” along with a link for, say, a YouTube video of a sweet-faced pug so fat it can’t roll over, or a 4-year-old performing the Single Ladies dance. Most of these videos live up...(read more)

Polygamists are Packrats

2009-11-05T17:05:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Sonia Smith: What have I learned over the past week watching polygamist Raymond Merril Jessop’s trial in the sleepy west Texas ranching town of Eldorado? Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints save everything. And now, with the first criminal prosecution of an FLDS leader in Texas, this tendency to hoard every little scrap has come back to bite them. In trying to prove Jessop impregnated his 16-year-old “spiritual” wife in November 2004...(read more)

In A Long-Term Relationship, Do Women Lose Their Sex Drive More Quickly Than Men?

2009-11-04T21:14:00Z

A post from DoubleX Desire Lab blogger Daniel Bergner: There’s a theory that has some currency among sex researchers and therapists: that, over time in monogamous relationships, women lose desire more than men do. Not much data exists; I’m aware of only one large study on this subject. But the thought is that women’s libidos need more spark in order to ignite, and so women are particularly susceptible to losing desire as they remain with the same partner. It’s an idea that runs somewhat counter to...(read more)

We Shouldn't Judge Abby Johnson Yet, We Need to Know More

2009-11-04T20:28:00Z

Amanda , Before I begin, I want to clarify something. I’m not “anti-choice.” I am anti-abortion. That might sound like semantics, but I think it’s a sign of the gulf between abortion-rights supporters and abortion foes. “Anti-choice” has a connotation of “anti-woman,” that being against abortion means you think women shouldn’t have control over their bodies. I will defend until my dying day a woman’s right to choose whether to have sex. I think the pill might have been the greatest invention of the...(read more)

Pagans Were the Real Winners in Last Night's Election

2009-11-04T18:42:00Z

Dan Halloran is the next City Council Representative for New York’s 19th district. He is a Republican. Also, he is the "First Atheling," or prince, among members of a local pagan group that worships Norse gods. "It is our hope," he explained on his now-missing website, "to reconstruct the pre-Christian religion of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European peoples, within a cultural framework and community environment." Excellent ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX )....(read more)

Women and Virginia Governor-Elect Robert McDonnell

2009-11-04T17:36:00Z

The turning point for the Virginia governor’s race came in August, when the Washington Post published a copy of Republican Robert McDonnell’s master's thesis , in which he argued that working women were detrimental to America, among other retrograde points. McDonnell’s genius in the campaign was to instantly focus the debate on whether or not he thinks women should be able to work (which, of course, he does) and thus obscure every other way in which his policies are, in fact, retrograde and bad for...(read more)

Even The Very Worst Prosecutors Can't Be Sued, For Good Reason

2009-11-04T16:03:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer K.J. Dell'Antonia: Supreme Court followers (and NPR listeners) heard an outrageous story today—that of an innocent man who spent more than two decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit before evidence of the apparent gross racism and misconduct of the police and prosecutors who put him there was uncovered. It's hard not to crave justice for this man—but what seems just for him will make justice less likely for everyone else. Lawyers for Terry Harrison have argued...(read more)

"Precious" Gets A Few Things Wrong

2009-11-04T15:20:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Beth Fertig: In the new movie Precious , Clareece Precious Jones is beaten by her mother and raped so often by her father that she’s pregnant with his second child. She’s also illiterate. I’ve spent the past three years profiling illiterate young adults, and I decided to take two of them to a preview screening . Yamilka and her brother, Alejandro, now 26 and 24, are Dominican immigrants. They’d gotten all the way to high school without learning to read. After a hearing...(read more)

Maine Voters Rejected Gay Marriage

2009-11-04T04:35:00Z

When the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2003, the polls showed disapproval by a margin of 53 percent to 35 percent. After the ruling went into effect, legislators geared up to reverse it by amending the state constitution. But two years later, the poll numbers had flipped, and the backlash never came. That's because reversing the court's ruling was a long process, not a quick and hasty ballot initiative like the one that Maine passed in Tuesday's election....(read more)

Fishy Story From Former Director of Planned Parenthood

2009-11-03T22:58:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte: I'm sorry, Rachael , but this story you linked about Abby Johnson's sudden conversion from a Planned Parenthood director to an anti-choice fanatic has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese after being used for target practice. Johnson's story fits way too neatly into a bunch of easily disproven anti-choice myths, the main one being that all it takes is one glance at an ultrasound to cause someone to "realize" that hey! abortion removes a fetus from...(read more)

In Support of a More Stringent Use of the Term ‘Douchebag’

2009-11-03T21:48:00Z

A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans: There’s a funny spoof video up on Boing Boing framed as a PSA of sorts in support of douchebag solidarity. It features a handful of self-pegged douchebags, one pumping iron at the gym, another riffing for the amusement of drink-dangling babes at a bar, all waxing on about the persecution of the douches: “For too long you’ve told us to shut the fuck up ... that people who are different from me matter.” But because I evidently cannot take a joke (and this may...(read more)