Choice Words

This piece, written by Choice USA activist Melody Nelson and 2007 recipient of the Commitment to Leadership Award, originally appeared in the RH Reality Check series, Emerging Voices for Choice.

For the past year, I have been attempting to find new ways to start and expand upon conversations around reproductive health and justice. What I have found as I learn how to organize people towards progressive change, is that people may not have time to lend towards becoming politically active - but they always have to time tell you their opinions on current issues. Conversations can be empowering for people. It is in conversations, we as people presumably have the time in our lives to question our own assumptions. Dialogue makes it easier to loosen the hold on our opinions; opening our eyes to another way of viewing a policy that may not directly affect us, yet acknowledging the inequality in legislation that indirectly restricts or limits another person’s access to health care or education.

With my discussion group the Pleasure Education Resource for the Vegas Valley (PERVV), we bounce around new ways to start hard conversations about reproductive justice in order to initiate progressive cohesion. In our Pleasure Parties we attempt to get a cross-section of people in one room talking about all of the ways in which our issues overlap. My hope for creating conversations with community members around social justice issues is to get more and more people involved in the movement. I am especially focused on young women of color, because I can see the positive influence we have to offer to the movement as a result of the layers of oppression that affect our daily lives. Our very presence forces the issue of total inclusion, and everyone can learn from a different point of view. (more…)

This piece, written by Choice USA’s incoming Executive Director Kierra Johnson, originally appeared in the RH Reality Check series, Emerging Voices for Choice.

In a time when there are all kinds of awards for all types of achievements, the question ‘why another awards event?’ is an honest and timely one. Over the last couple of elections young people have come to be recognized as a viable voting bloc, a constituency to be targeted by electoral campaigns as well as by issue and advocacy groups. However, in 2003, dialogue around young people was often very accusatory, dismissive and at most condescending and paternalistic. Post-Roe vs. Wade, post-civil rights movement, children of the baby boomers and their kids were actively being labeled as lazy, apathetic, unappreciative, ungrateful, complacent and frankly uninterested in the social and political movements in our country and abroad. Those few young people who were seen as exceptions to the rule were donned “Leaders of the Future”.

Choice USA’s intent in establishing the Generation Awards was to accomplish two things. (more…)

Choice USA’s annual Generation-to-Generation Celebration is less than a week away and RH Reality Check approached me to see if any of our awardees or staff would be interested in guest blogging on their site about youth leadership in the reproductive justice movement. We jumped at the opportunity.

Kierra Johnson, Choice USA’s incoming Executive Director; Melody Nelson, a Choice USA activist, leader, and awardee this year; Nora Dye, an activist quite literally on the road to discovering a lot of truths about reproductive justice around the country while on a Choice USA supported bike trip; and Linh Tran, a leader with the California Young Women’s Collaborative, of which Choice USA partners; all wrote pieces that I’ll be posting here.

This group of young women give a snippet into the variety of leadership styles, the different ways to make change, and the importance of young people’s voices in creating a truly diverse and active movement. Check out their posts and leave your comments.

Within the last 5 years, online identities have become the best way to network, and even for some people, a Second Life.

My sophmore year I took a class called Gender and Moving Image Media where I studied a lot about the gaze/spectator concepts and gender identity and expression. How we see people makes up for at least half of what they truely are. There is a power in looking and its crazy to think about how online identities and the internet in general are shaping the way we identify ourselves and how we identify others.

I mean, just think about youtube and the Lonelygirl scandals. We were convinced that because a young girl’s appearance conveyed certain social symbols and meaning, the experience she shared with us was real. When in fact her “experience” or story rather, was a skit written by two grown men.

We need to start asking ourselves what is at risk when we create identities to allow us to obtain experiences that are not truly ours. And better yet, who should have the privilege to create an online identity that masks their true selves and who shouldn’t? How many 12 year old girls do you know claiming to be 19 on MySpace? How does that number compare to the 45 year old pedophiles who say they’re 16?

I’ve been following the MySpace legal battles with their public sex offender issues since it all got hot and heavy in early 2006. Check out the latest news here.

I’ve known about this website for a while, but I thought I would share it with you all out there in case you haven’t seen it! It’s called Gurl.com. It’s a site geared towards teenage girls 13 and up. The site is committed to discussing issues that affect teenagers in a nonjudgmental, personal way. And I think it’s amazing! It breaks everything down into terms that teenagers can understand!

For example it has an amazing section on the difference between gender and sex. They give a great analogy to talk about how gender and sex are connected:

Think about a coat rack. Sex is the physical structure of the coat rack. Gender is what you hang on the coat rack — it’s the coats and hats and maybe that weird poncho your mom makes you wear in the rain.

Then there are the Deal With It! Charts. One is about birth control methods. It gives various birth control methods, talks about the effectiveness against STDs and the effectiveness against pregnancy. Very informational and easy to understand for anyone, but it’s nice to know that the whole site was designed with girls like me in mind.

One of the neocon bastions of political “thought,” The Weekly Standard, came out this week with a cover article discussing the flaws of American feminism in the context of international women’s oppression. Read “The Subjection of Islamic Women And The Fecklessness of American Feminism” here.

Sommers essentially discusses two arguably contradictory points: that American feminists don’t do enough internationally, and that they are deluded into thinking there are problems domestically.

She begins by listing reasons that American feminists avoid focusing on the subjugation of women outside America, namely within Islam. She claims “many feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgement on non-Western cultures.” Honestly, how many feminists condone the burqa? How many feminists support female genital mutilation? Oh right, none.

But Sommers then begins to discuss how “reactionary religious movements everywhere are targeting women,” apparently forgetting about the Bible belt. To top it off, she ignores or mocks all instances of what feminists “perceive as injustices suffered by women in America.” Do we need to remind her that America’s not perfect? She’s arguing to outsource feminism at the expense of the progress we’ve made in the US.

Her argument can be summed up with this quote:

The women who constitute the American feminist establishment today are destined to play little role in the battle for Muslim women’s rights. Preoccupied with their own imagined oppression, they can be of little help to others — especially family-centered Islamic feminists.

The scary part about this article is that the Weekly Standard has a pretty solid base of neocon subscribers.

Just to temper the mood with optimism, Sommers, despite her critique of American feminism, does provide hopeful news from within radically Islamic countries for the rise of feminism.

It’s great when young people realize they can make a difference, especially in the areas that really matter to them. I’m talking today about teenagers in Davao City, Philippines, who forced candidates to talk about reproductive health and include it as their “top priority.”

The issue of reproductive health has routinely been swept under the carpet — there’s no comprehensive legislation, and despite clamorings of young people, no one in power typically discusses it.

So, two nonprofits — the Davao Teen Center and the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines — are lobbying councilmen to have the issue of reproductive health addressed. Here’s what they’re hoping for:

“The election must be a manifestation of people’s democracy and freedom and it is also an expression of one’s responsibility to think twice if the candidates’ top priority is the inclusion of basic welfare and services on reproductive health in their legislative agenda.”

Here’s hoping that the young voices of Davao will be heard.

Anyone who knows me, understands that I have a bit of anglophilia. I was talking to my best friend last night and she was telling me about the state of things in the UK. Apparently, abortion is covered under the National Health service, doctors have to sign a waiver allowing you to obtain an abortion. However, they are having a rash of refusals by doctors to sign these waivers for women.

I did run across an article early this morning about an innovative way to find emergency contraception in London. VIA TEXT! After my last experience I would push for something like this in the US!

However, I guess, even with innovative ways to find EC, the UK is dealing with a push for mandatory counselling and what seems like a waiting period for women who want to have an abortion.

So as school wraps up and we’re getting ready for our lazy days, I know you’re looking for ways to pass the balmy summer stretches. Well, I’ve got an idea for you, why don’t you and your friends make plans to make history at the US Social Forum?

So what are you waiting for? I know you’re aching for something to do…Why don’t you start planning out that road trip now? Make sure, if its en route, that you see the Beverly Hillbillies Car too.

Did anyone else catch the article on Gulliani’s donations to Planned Parenthood on CNN yesterday?

Giuliani said the donations were not inconsistent with his personal opposition to abortion because “Planned Parenthood makes information available” on other options available to pregnant women, including adoption.

“If there is going to be a choice, there are organizations that are going to give people information about that choice,” he said. “I just as strongly support the idea that a woman should have information about adoption.”

His comments at a candidate’s debate in California seem to have gone astray from that personal belief, and this is scary, for someone who has expressed that it is a woman’s right to choose (even if he is personally opposed to abortion). It seems like Guiliani is “flip-flopping”…

Giuliani said it would be “OK” with him if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion. But he said “it would also be OK” if “strict constructionist” judges viewed Roe as precedent and upheld it.

The other candidates were far worse, in general, with their opposition to abortion and some even decrying that evolution never happened. As much as Guiliani is flip-flopping, it’s sad to admit that he’s probably the best option we’ve got in a Republican presidential candidate.