Nice Try With Palin, John McCain

August 30, 2008 – 12:56 pm

John McCain waited until after Barack Obama’s speech to make a superbly-timed announcement of his vice-presidential pick.

Unfortunately for him, he undermined what were his best arguments against Obama with that choice.

Sarah Palin is the first-term governor of Alaska, a large, oil-rich state with a small population, and she’s even younger than Obama. Her only political experience before beating the previous Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, in a primary in 2006 was being mayor of Walsilla.

Palin is a mother of five, including one son who’s off to Iraq and another, just born, with Down syndrome. She is staunchly pro-life and considered a Christian conservative, but, rather obviously, is a high-profile working mother.

She campaigned on ethics reform and is considered (much like McCain) a party maverick. She is also seen as a break from ethically-challenged Alaska Republicans like Senator Ted Stevens. However, Palin is under investigation herself for possibly having abused her office to get her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, fired from his job as a state trooper, according to the Wall Street Journal. She supports drilling as energy policy, and her husband is a longtime BP employee, but he’s a blue-collar type. Palin has also threatened to evict ExxonMobil and its partners from their drilling rights to publicly held oilfields.

This woman is quite a contradiction, seen at once as a sop to the religious right who have not quite come around to McCain and as outreach to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who value biological sex over a record on the issues. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics, women | Comments (6)

Election 2008: Race Is More Than Black and White

August 25, 2008 – 10:44 am

In the current American presidential election, race has become a pivotal issue. Obama is the first African American man to have a legitimate chance of becoming president of the United States. Blacks and whites vacillate between a celebratory end of the racial divide, and the further entrenchment of racial hostilities.

The post racial world debate has gone mainstream, giving rise to conversations that are long overdue.

While we are continually refining the discourse surrounding race, what has become patently obvious is that the term people of colour stands for black. The United States has a historical legacy of black disenfranchisement that clearly needs to be addressed. Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the rape and sterilization of black women have left a lasting legacy on the social psyche; however this should not erase other bodies of colour from our social conversations. Neither of the candidates, nor mainstream media has made an attempt to specifically address the needs of Muslims, Native Americans, Asians, or Latinos. The aforementioned are the bodies that have become erased. Colour cannot and should not be solely represented by blacks.

Though Muslims are not all of colour they constitute a group of people that have come under extreme social attack since 911. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, election 08, human rights, north america, racism, women | Comments (9)

Gods and Nymphs: The Myths and Realities of Modern Life and Love

July 21, 2008 – 6:53 am

A few months ago, I read that Russian women have lost the war against sexism, and that one of the symptoms of said defeat is the dominance of the Nymph - “a professional beauty,” the ideal partner for the modern man.

The author of the essay I’m quoting is Evgenia Pischikova, a funny, clever woman. While I found her perceptions of American feminism to be somewhat idealized, and some of her statements regarding modern Russian woman downright exaggerated, I nevertheless believe in the Nymph. I’ve seen far too many beautiful women, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian, affect a soulless gaze in the presence of eligible bachelors to deny the Nymph’s existence.

Yet I do not think the story of the Nymph to be simple. Neither do I think that her tale is complete without a thorough discussion of her male counterpart - the God.

Now, the modern God, for the sake of Pischikova’s analogy, is pretty much any man who is, for some reason, desirable to the Nymph, usually marked by a paternalistic (or, as some people are fond of saying, “protective” attitude). We’re accustomed to believe that the God is wealthy, or well-off, and he generally is.

Modern Gods demand sacrifices as readily as the ancient ones. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, europe, feminism, love, sex, women | Comments (5)

What Now? A Turn to Substance for Barack Obama

June 9, 2008 – 1:53 am

With Barack the nominee, the question is: what now? In Kentucky exit polls, only 1 in 3 Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama in the general election. About 4 in 10 said they would vote for McCain, and nearly 1 in 4 said they wouldn’t vote at all.

Even accounting for the potential rawness of emotion at exit polls, this is clearly an obstacle. Add to this picture the widespread outrage among women at Obama’s and the news media’s misogyny and the fact that some voters in Florida and Michigan see Obama as the agent of their disenfranchisement, and you can see how Obama has serious challenges in many states boasting huge populations and a substantial number of electoral college votes.

Perhaps these statistics can begin to explain why in the 20 states where she won, Clinton trumps McCain 50% to 43% in daily Gallup polls over the last 2 weeks, while Obama trails at 45% to McCain’s 50%. And why across the board, in a Gallup survey of all 50 states that included 11,000 registered voters, Clinton performed better than Obama when set against McCain (she led 48% to 45%; Obama loses 45% to 46%).

Her wins in swing states like Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, Florida, Pennsylvania and Arkansas support this, and in these swing states she beat McCain according to Gallup by an even greater margin, 49% to 43% (while Obama lost).

Obama needs Hillary supporters, he cannot win without us. So how is he going to achieve this? Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, election 08, north america, women | Comments (1)

Two Thoughts in the Prado Museum, Madrid

May 9, 2008 – 8:36 am

I. Guards, sentries, guides, they stalk the halls like silent wraiths clad in their dead blue blazers and knee length skirts. To speak to them is to encounter monotony made woman: instructions enunciated with the indifference usually associated with divorcees.

The majority of them are aged, infirm, with bloated ankles, using the numerous rocking chairs provided to them out of the kindness of the administration. The presence of these women, if they can really be called this, in this palace of art, is anomalous. Their presence does not give affirmation to the things they so jealously guard.

They represent change, age, wrinkles, flaws, sweat, and disfiguration – imperfection. Some are, undoubtedly, beautiful – with fine Castillian features, small angular noses one would pay to trace with his tongue, the pert neck of a swan, curly hair springing with life. Still, their staid standoffish conservatism weighs against the dance, the mirth, the laughter, the flowers, the cherubs, the saints, lechery, hedonism, and lust on display in so many paintings.

In a place where so much is given over to celebrating the glorious sacrifice of Christ, the desensitized omniscience, the ossified haughtiness, the indolent emptiness of these women is a slap in the face. In comparison to the affirmation around them, their lifelessness gives the impression that beauty doesn’t exist today; that it is only a purview of bygone times.

I would like a museum to be dedicated to nurturing every kind of beauty; a place where the mix of divine and human perfection is not just on display upon walls – but found in a more perfect, timeless, eternal form among the living. Why does immortality only belong to the dead? Read More »

By Ali Eteraz | Posted in Arts & Literature, Columnist, Religion, beauty, christianity, creative nonfiction, islam, painting, women | Comments (42)

Yoni is the Wrong Damn Word: Marginalization and Exoticism

April 30, 2008 – 5:48 am

Why, oh, why does it have to be Yoni Ki Baat? Why? I’m South Asian, right? I’m solid South Asian. So why does it make my blood boil that South Asians are doing an adaptation of the Vagina Monologues called Yoni Ki Baat?

Well, I don’t have a damn yoni, for one thing. The first time I read the word yoni, it was in a Nancy Friday book of sexual fantasies and some white chick was describing her power centre being plunged or whatever and calling it a yoni.

I do not call my c*** yoni. I’m Pakistani. We don’t do Sanskrit in Pakistan, not on purpose, anyway (I take no responsibility for accidental Sanskrit). Pakistani vernacular has many words for vagina and none of them is yoni. So running into a performance of Yoni Ki Baat by South Asians in Seattle really just fries my onions all wrong.

However, I can deal. I know that in the US South Asian communities are dominated by Indianness and this is simply a reflection of the sub-continental hegemonic power structures. I don’t like it, but I’m a lazy person and that’s not a fight I’m going to pick on a 6-month quickie in Seattle.

A little bit of investigation, however, brings me the news that, no, in fact, even in Indian contexts, using yoni for vagina is extremely problematic. It’s a Sanskrit word. Sanskrit is the base for north Indian languages, including, most prominently, Hindi. Using it successfully projects, once again, north India as true India and Dravidian south India as other. As incidental. As internal or private. As “ethnic.” As not-really-there.

Well done, feminism. Read More »

By Kyla Pasha | Posted in Arts & Literature, Society, feminism, sex, south asia, women | Comments (10)

Yearning For Answers: Fundamentalism, Polygamy, and the Role of Women

April 21, 2008 – 9:22 am

When I heard about the raid on a fundamentalist Texas compound called Yearning for Zion, I got to thinking about polygamy (well, my initial thought was more along the lines of “wow, I really want to hurl my coffee cup at the wall,” but that should probably go without saying).

Although the raid was part of an ongoing child abuse probe (hence my desire to destroy a perfectly innocent coffee cup), the issue of polygamy once again took center stage as Americans and everyone else who watched the news coming out of Texas began a new round of debating the subject.

Let me put this as succinctly as possible: If you advocate for the legalization of polygamy in the States, I will only take you seriously if you advocate polyandry as well. Now for the caveat: Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, Religion, christianity, family, north america, sex, women | Comments (40)

Acting Like a Rectal Polyp Does not a Feminist Statement Make

February 25, 2008 – 4:06 am

Any good idea can get hijacked for the sake of advancing asininity, and feminism is no exception.

Back in college, flyers tacked up on the walls of computer labs read that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” I agree. I’ve always felt human (except for that one year when the immortal genius of Arnold Schwarzenegger had me wishing that I was a cyborg), and believe that female friends and relatives are human as well - with the right to make reproductive choices, go to college, join the army, make a decent wage, be safe from rape and other forms of assault, wear overalls and sneakers instead of high-heels and frou-frou (thought I do like me some frou-frou), and so on.

However, I have recently been told that feminism is actually the radical notion that cheating and verbal abuse are OK, as long as it’s a woman who’s engaging in both. Apparently, because men abuse women, it’s morally defensible for a woman to abuse a man. It’s called “subverting the dominant paradigm” and any woman in a heterosexual relationship is entitled to it.

So, let’s wrap our minds around this illustrious bit of logic: abuse is a bad thing, and we will “subvert” it by actively engaging in it? Color me unimpressed. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, humor, women | Comments (22)

Just Shut Up and Drive Into a Wall Already

February 2, 2008 – 9:26 am

Of all the indignities one has to suffer on account of being publicly female, nothing irks me quite as much as being screamed at from of passing cars. Or so is the case as of late, anyway.

Harassment by random jerks is, of course, nothing new.

It happens on Internet forums. It happens to children - sometimes with terrible consequences (and lingering questions as to what, exactly, can be done about such phenomena). Even record companies are not above harassment nowadays, or so I’ve read.

Yet, what I hate about drive-by harassment in particular is how bloody cowardly it is, and how unnerving for the victim it can also be. There’s nothing quite as easy and consequence-free as rolling down your window and shouting something malicious at a startled pedestrian before speeding away.

I’ve traveled enough to know that this sort of thing happens everywhere - from sleepy suburban subdivisions in the Bible Belt to cosmopolitan cities in Muslim countries to the parking lots of upscale shopping malls in the heart of Europe. Here, there, and everywhere, the common denominator seems to be gender: the perpetrators are usually male and their targets are usually female.

My love of travel combined with my love of walking results in the fact that I often get shouted at in languages I don’t understand. This creates an entirely new dimension of creepy. What is the guy saying?

“Hey sexy, lookin’ good!”…?

“Your visible elbows are offensive to me!”…?

“Dear God, I’ve just discovered an enraged king cobra under my seat, please do something!”…?

I may never know. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, feminism, humor, women | Comments (6)

Today, The Washington Post Made Me Gnash My Teeth

January 30, 2008 – 6:12 am

Sweet Baby Jesus, Anne Applebaum, stereotype much?

Of course there were many very famous “sultry” women in the USSR - things did not begin, and end, with Stalin and Liubov Orlova (an actress from the 1930’s). Where on earth do people get such ideas in the first place? Just because nobody was wearing Chanel does not, somehow, mean that there was no beauty, no style, no sensuality.

And no, not everyone in the USSR wore polyester. But thanks for checking with actual people who lived under the regime.

Why is it OK to assume that before the introduction of Vogue, an entire country couldn’t possibly understand what beauty and style is all about? Sure, consumer goods were practically nonexistent. Sure, looking “different” may have garnered you some unwanted attention. Yet, the Soviets had their own pop culture, they had their own sirens - whether sauntering across the theater stage or walking home from the bus stop. Because the Soviets, amazingly enough, were human beings, with or without Western influence.

While I appreciate the fact that Anne Applebaum isn’t screeching about them evil Russians and, instead, finding something she deems positive, her outlook also completely disregards the thousands of women who have been trafficked from the Soviet Union following its dissolution. Those gorgeous women she sees hanging out with the older men in the posh restaurants? I sincerely hope that 100% of them are there of their own volition, enjoying their time, having a blast.

However, as someone who has actually done research, I’m not entirely sure that my hopes correspond with reality.

I’m not against beauty culture. I do think it’s been, and continues to be, unfairly used against women - especially those who have no interest in participating. Applebaum’s piece has reminded me of the fact that beauty culture can also obscure the issues of traffickers and other exploiters.

I understand the sort of piece that Applebaum was trying to write. She was having fun. I like to have fun too - and get very irritated when pious wailing about Oppressors and Oppressed overwhelms me, because, not every single damn piece of writing has to be incredibly serious and somber and grave. If it was, we’d all shoot ourselves in the head and let the cockroaches take over.

Yet, if you’re going to rely on ridiculous generalizations, your piece is no longer fun. It’s merely tacky. And, quite possibly, damaging.

Before, it used to be “evil Russians.” Now, it’s “attractive Russians” (with an occasional smattering of “evil” - I should also note that people use the word “Russian” to refer to practically all of us who came out of the USSR, but that’s a whole other conversation).

I don’t mind the “attractive” in principle. I get equally tired of condescending Western women who roll their eyes at the poor foreign dears - wearing that make-up! Balancing on those heels! The Feminist Revolution will save you, my darlings, each and every one! Just shut up and don’t speak for yourself!

I merely want there to be a balance. Is that too much to ask for, in this day and age? Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, central asia, europe, women | Comments (15)