#FeministFriday Weekly Roundup

Ugh, ya'll. Where to begin. I feel like this week was heavy with feminist news, which can be good, and bad. First, there's the GOP Hot Mess Debate, the media's passive and dismissive reporting of domestic violence, women not gettin' paid, you know, the usual. But let's start on a high note, I guess.

So Move to End Violence is a NoVo Foundation-funded movement that focuses on supporting the people who are working to end violence against women and girls. I've heard several of their "Movement Makers" speak at various conferences and events including Nan Stoops from the Washington DV coalition and Kelly Miller from the Idaho coalition, and both of them were exceptionally engaging and thought-provoking. Anyway, I'm on Move's listserv, and yesterday their email blast challenged us all to take their "Self-Care Challenge." Now, self care is a big buzzword right now in the victim services field, and there's so many different ways that individuals take care of themselves. Self care is something that I say I practice, but in reality I'm really quite terrible at it. So yea, I think I'm gonna take this challenge, thankyouverymuch. Check in with me at the end of the challenge and we'll see what kind of a difference it made :)

Next up, I guess I have to address the #GOPDebate this week. Or, as I like to call it #ShitShowOnCNN. Highlights include Trump's racist remarks. And no, I'm not talking about this instance. Or this one. Or, this, though all of those are noteworthy. I'm talking about the new remarks on Wednesday night when he said that he "couldn't be expected to recognize Arab name after Arab name." Sigh. Not only is that just downright racist, it's shit foreign policy. This, on the same day that a young Muslim boy was handcuffed, arrested, and suspended from school for bringing a homemade clock, thought to be a bomb. At least President Obama had something nice to say to the poor kid. Other significant moments of the debate: Carly Fiorina slammed Donald Trump after his comment about her looks, Jeb Bush defends his brother saying that he kept us safe (umm...forgetting 9/11...), and the vast majority of the candidates on stage having no great idea on which woman to put on the $10 bill.

Moving on...a new report came out this week from the Institute for Women's Policy Research that says women will not see equal pay with men until 2059, one year longer than previously projected. I'm not sure what to be most shocked about, that it's going to be 2059, or that it's even longer than everyone expected. It reminds me of that episode of The West Wing when Ainsley and Sam were debating the Equal Rights Amendment:

Also, let's be clear: white women are paid on average 78-80 cents to every dollar a man earns. For women of color, that gap is even wider, all the way down to about 56 cents.

Next up on the list: domestic violence. There have been several articles in the past few weeks calling out the media's portrayal of gender violence. News outlets are calling them mass shootings, shooting sprees, incidents, love triangles gone wrong, and even road rage "accidents." Let's get something straight, ya'll, these are instances of domestic violence. This "love triangle" gone wrong was actually a professor ruthlessly murdering his ex-partner, as well as another professor. That "incident" was actually a man shooting a woman after weeks of stalking her, after she tried twice to get a restraining order, and twice she was denied. And that "road rage accident" was a woman who begged police for help and was denied, only to be brutally murdered by her ex partner. Clementine Ford says it well in her article "The passive language used in reporting to disguise domestic violence"

"Tara Brown was victimised by an abusive ex-partner. She sought help from Gold Coast police less than a week before her murder but was turned away. She was the victim of a system which still too frequently ignores domestic violence and marginalises the people (who are most often women and children) who live with it. Witnesses describe seeing her ex-partner chase her in a vehicle, run her off the road and then proceed to bash her already damaged body with a scrap of metal. This was a moment of extreme brutality and horror. 

And yet, after Tara Brown died in hospital, how did news outlets and police choose to report her passing? By variously describing it as the result of a "road rage incident" or a "traffic accident" - as if she had taken the wrong turn one morning, cut the wrong person off and thus stumbled into a completely random situation of unexplainable, unpredictable violence."

Jessica Valenti also wrote a really great piece on this issue this week, saying:

But when the media reports on these killings as standard shootings, or - as they do frequently - say that a killer “snapped”, they are sending the message that there is nothing that could have been done to stop these tragedies. It’s lazy thinking that allows us throw our hands up and do nothing, even when there is so much still to do.

Also in #FeministFriday news, a great Everyday Feminism comic on racist football mascots, money for testing rape kits, Matt Damon mansplaining diversity to a woman of color (so white it hurts) and Shelby Mueller making me ashamed to be from Iowa.

That's all for now folks. I'm sure they'll be lots more news next week!