The New Agenda Blog

Rolling Stone Magazine's September "True Blood" cover is getting a lot of attention.

Welcome, readers! Do you read Rolling Stone? I want your opinion about the Rolling Stone’s September issue. What do you think of the cover that features a woman sandwiched between two men? All three are very naked and very bloody. They appear to be covered in someone else’s blood.

Some people think the picture is sexist, but other people think it is perfectly okay because of sexual tension on the characters’ TV series. Furthermore, two of the actors are married (to each other or someone else, I don’t know), so it might be okay to photograph those naked people for a public audience.

Some people debate whether the brown-haired man’s hands are actually groping the woman.

14-year-olds see the cover at newsstands and say it is inappropriate.

Some people say the cover is not sexist because the woman on the cover is a powerful woman on the TV series.

Some people say the cover is degrading to women because the image is pornographic and degrading because she is sandwiched between two men.

Some people say that even if the cover is not sexist, it is nonetheless inappropriate for a public audience because it is, after all, pornographic due to the nudity and the sex positions.

So, readers… what do you think of the cover?

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

I’ve been watching the fourth season of Mad Men with a knot in my stomach.  For the first three, I convinced myself that the level of blatant sexism at the Sterling Cooper (now Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) advertising agency was as retro as three-martini lunches and girdles.  But the most recent episodes have disabused me of those notions.  Truth be told, when it comes to sexism we have little to brag about.  After 40 years, we’re not as far from Mad Men’s women as we might like to think.

For the non-viewer, the show brings us back to the days right on the cusp of momentous social change – before women, people of color, and gays shouted “enough!” and demanded equality.  Mad Men focuses on the strained relationships between the sexes and the simmering anger that occasionally explodes when women scratch the surface of the sexism that defines their lives.  It’s now 1965 (the series began in 1960) and you can see the subtle shifts in how the women respond over these years to being treated as afterthoughts, trophies, sexual conquests or children.  Two years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, junior copywriter Peggy Olson now pushes back harder against her dismissive boss and male colleagues.  Betty lashes out at ex-husband Don Draper’s self-involvement and Joan Holloway claims a less dutiful posture at the office – and at home — asserting her smarts and her limits.  Secretaries bedded by Don don’t automatically accept his morning-after nonchalance. (more…)

The following op-ed by The New Agenda’s Amy Siskind is featured on the front page of The Huffington Post.

This has not been a good week for Democratic women.

First, a New York Times op-ed penned by two progressive feminists noting two disturbing trends:  1) Democratic Leaders have been bargaining away our reproductive rights, and 2) the Democratic Party is not seeking out nor encouraging strong women leaders .  Then, a Los Angeles Times story descrying that hopes for the “Year of the Women” are fading.  Given the projected seats losses by incumbent Democratic women, women’s representation in government will likely decrease in 2010 (for the first time since 1976).

Well, gosh golly gee.  Let me gather up some faux shock and righteous indignation and say:  “You mean the Democratic Party doesn’t care about women?“. There, that’s better.

Why are Democratic women moving backwards?  Because we’ve promised our vote to one party on the basis of one issue.  We have no bargaining power or leverage.  The old idiom:  Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?, has a DNC version:  If we pay lip service to the eggs, we’ll get their vote for free!

To get women back on the path of advancement, we need a new strategy.  It’s time for women leaders to voyage beyond womens studies and take a lesson from the economics department.  When business as usual stops working, it’s time to restructure and reinvent.

The imperious assumption that reproductive rights is the litmus test for our vote is holding us back.  United, women are a powerful voting block.  Divided, we are essentially stalled.  To move forward, women need to find common ground.  Here’s some tips on getting there:

1. Reproductive Rights should not be our centerpiece issue (more…)

Remember the 1990s and the Clinton scandals? Remember how, after a while, all the media attention was like so much white noise and it became a chore to pay attention? Remember how most people you knew wished those spittle-flecked Republicans would just STFU already? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you recall those as the Bush years and you and your friends just wished all those spittle-flecked Democrats would blow it out their ears for once? The point is that a constant barrage of hyperbolic negativity often has the opposite effect from what was intended. It doesn’t breed agreement; it breeds apathy and discontent.

So it is with the subject of Sarah Palin. She is constantly under attack and disrespected by feminists on the left, who often don’t know much about her other than what they hear in the echo chamber that is the left-blogosphere. The noise level has ratcheted way up since she started describing herself and her conservative sisters as feminists and “Mamma Grizzlies.”

As a writer who teaches people how to write, I can tell you that you’ll lose your audience if constant negativity is your opening strategy, which is why I almost didn’t finish reading the NYT op-ed by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, A Palin of Our Own. It droned on and on for nine solid paragraphs (out of 15 total) of negativity and bad logic, using few, if any, examples or citations to back up questionable partisan speculation about Sarah Palin.

I’m glad I did finish it though, because it is the most promising sign yet that feminists on the left are finally willing to address their #1 problem: internal issues regarding women and the Democratic Party. For a while now feminists on the left have been engaged in a profoundly destructive focus, clearly seen in the various campaigns to tear down Sarah Palin, the vitriol directed at her and other Republican women, and the impulse to, ironically, defend feminism against expansion. It’s a weird dynamic akin to xenophobia, and it has cost them the ears, hearts, and minds of many women of every generation, but especially those of us who didn’t get to go to the best colleges or didn’t go to college at all, and who don’t live in fabulous urban areas. In other words, most of America. The kind of internal focus promoted by Holmes and Traister in their article will be a necessary step in creating a constructively focused feminism that can attract these women back. (more…)

Beverly Cooper Neufeld is VP of the New York Women’s Agenda and Director of the Equal Pay Coalition NYC, and formerly Executive Director of The White House Project. This article has been cross-posted from On The Issues Magazine with the author’s consent. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

A small cadre of women rallied on the steps of New York’s City Hall on April 28th, 2007, the day known as a Equal Pay Day. This day marks the time when a working woman catches up to what a white male earned in the previous year – she puts in 16 months of work to make what he earned in 12 months pay. It is a calendar translation of the often-recited statistic that a woman earns 77 cents to one dollar earned by a man.

Sponsored by the New York Women’s Agenda, this was the first ever recognition of Equal Pay Day in New York City. Those of us on the steps wore red because when it comes to pay, women are in the red. We were also seeing red, but turned that energy into the formation of a new coalition of 41 diverse organizations that is attempting to transform our town into the best city in the nation for working women. Called the Equal Pay Coalition NYC (EPCNYC), we are leading the way for New York City to take the lead in addressing the persistent pay gap.

Talk about Equal Pay is all the rage today. The Wall Street Journal blogged about Equal Pay Day. Lilly Ledbetter became a news fixture after she helped get a law passed to extend the time limitations for cases of secret pay discrimination — she had been denied compensation on those grounds for years of underpayment. A long-running lawsuit against Wal-Mart for paying less to women has been given the go-ahead in court, and in May, a jury awarded women at Novartis Pharmaceuticals substantial sums in back pay and punitive damages after finding of sex discrimination in the compensation.

There is a growing recognition, nationally and globally, that women’s economic security and well-being is a vital issue of our day, closely linked to the nation’s security, financial recovery and future health. But, there is little forward movement to create the needed change.

Overcoming the “Mad Men” Mentality

On the federal front, our Equal Pay laws, passed in the early 1960s when the world of “Mad Men” was not fiction, are weak. A partial fix, legislation known as the Paycheck Fairness Act is closer to passage this year because of the united effort of major women’s groups organized by the American Association of University Women (AAUW). It has a tough Senate fight ahead, and that’s before the midterm elections. The Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen current “equal pay for equal work laws” and protect workers from retaliation for sharing salary information. It has a chance, unlike the languishing Fair Pay Act, which would tackle “equal pay for work of equivalent value,” a critical reform but more difficult to explain and institute, making it harder to rally support. (more…)

Susan is the Founder of the blog Amazing Women Rock, where the following article was originally posted. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

The woman who was butchered and meat-hooked using photoshop for the ad featured in my last blog post may or may not have known how the image of her body would be used by advertisers.

But Canadian-born actress Pamela Anderson, whose boob-jobbed breasts famously drew millions of viewers to the infamously bouncing-down-the-beach TV series Baywatch, volunteered to be drawn and quartered by anti-fur lobbyists PETA for this protest piece, which was recently banned in Canada:

The Best Of Intentions…?

Pamela and PETA may very well have noble intentions (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here), but their continued used of the female form (almost always revealingly and tantalizingly unclothed), as an attention-getting strategy is, in my humble opinion, distasteful.

On its website, PETA proudly displays its growing list of overtly sexual, and possibly-designed-to-be-banned-and-so perhaps-not-surprisingly-banned advertising including the two below, both reportedly not accepted to be run during recent Superbowls. The banned ads can be found on the PETA site in a section disturbingly called “The Peta Files.”

Exhibit 1 is soft porn with vegetables: (more…)

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

I just love this video, and I have to keep watching it over and over again. At first, I wondered if it were a commercial or preview for an actual movie. However, after looking through www.imdb.com and finding nothing, I think this is a video a bunch of women created just for fun. And it certainly is a lot of fun.

This is a nifty yet anachronistic take on 1800s women who are bored into depression and need some adrenaline and excitement in their lives. Thus, they obtain stronger self-confidence and a different perspective. Instead of just waiting for men to notice them, they actively go out and get the men of their dream.

Once upon a time virtually every American was familiar with the name Carrie Chapman Catt. For much of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries she was the face of the women’s suffrage movement. Most Americans today don’t know many of the details of the women’s suffrage movement and passage of the 19^th amendment, and those that do are generally more familiar with Alice Paul’s story than with Carrie Chapman Catt’s. We learn some of Chapman Catt’s story and celebrate her many accomplishments on this, the 39^th annual Women’s Equality Day, which celebrates the 90^th anniversary of passage of the 19^th Amendment.

Carrie Clinton Lane was a trailblazer all her life. She graduated Valedictorian of her class at Iowa State College—the only female in the class of 1880. A mere five years later she became superintendent of Mason City, Iowa schools. Though she married twice, both of her husbands died, leaving her to live half her life with her suffragist companion (and Indiana native) Mary Garrett Hay. Chapman Catt and Hay are buried together at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. We visited their graves on our women’s history tour this July, but more on that later.

What Chapman Catt was most famous for were her tireless efforts and dogged determination to pursue voting rights for women. Alice Paul and Lucy Burn are often credited with the final push that resulted in the 19^th Amendment, and they deserve that credit. But their tactics would likely not have worked if Carrie Chapman Catt, along with Susan B. Anthony and other giants of the first wave, had not laid the groundwork. It was also Chapman Catt and her organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), who finished the work that Paul and Burn, sick and frail from their hunger strikes and prison beatings, could not. (more…)