Yesterday, the Pentagon announced plans to allow women into more front-line, combat jobs. The Service Women’s Action Network expressed disappointment that women will still be barred from serving as infantry, armor, and special operations forces, but said that the new rules were a big step in the right direction. As Adam Weinstein writes, “full gender equity in the ranks is no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’”

But enough of all the forward-thinking nonsense by people who know what they’re talking about! I know you’re all dying to hear what Rick Santorum thinks about all this. Via Politico:

I do have concerns about women in frontline combat. I think that can be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interests of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved. And I think that’s probably – you know, it already happens, of course, with the camaraderie of men in combat. But I think it would be even more unique if women were in combat. I think that’s probably not in the best interests of men, women or the mission.

Pro tip: If you bring up “emotions” when defending your discriminatory views, it will be an immediate red flag that you are a sexist asshat. (Seriously, the only thing worse might be talking about that weird thing where we bleed every month.) This is particularly true when you are discussing women and men who regularly face extreme mental and physical challenges you could only dream of.

Of course, this is entirely unsurprising coming from a guy who seems like he’d be more at home in the 1950s than here in the 21st century with the rest of us. Remember, Santorum misses the golden days when abortions were done by bad doctors in the shadows and states could make using birth control a crime. And the Washington Post points to a 2005 interview in which he defends his view that women should get back in the kitchen and blames “the radical feminists” for “convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.”

Danya Ensing is a 19-year-old student at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and a Feministing reader. Last week, she posted this video over on the Community blog, and I thought it was so great that I wanted all our readers to watch it.

Danya didn’t realize she was a feminist until a few years ago, but once she did, she started seeing gender everywhere. “What got me really interested in feminism was the way I felt as a single, young woman when I moved to Toronto. I noticed in a big city the way that men looked at women (myself included) on the street, the comments that were sometimes made, and overall the way that I, as a female, was told to conduct my daily life (don’t go out past a certain hour, don’t walk alone, look people in the eye, etc).” Now, Danya explores feminist ideas and the representation of women’s bodies in her art and photography.

A little while ago, Danya had a few things to say about the emphasis that our culture places on romantic relationships for women. Specifically, she objects to the way that people try to comfort someone who’s just gone through a break-up, which is usually by reassuring them that they’ll surely find someone else and that will make everything alright. The assumption that a long-term relationship will happen and will bring happiness, Danya argues, ties those two things together, setting us all up for failure.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, even the staunchest feminist can start to feel crappy if they’re single. But, Danya reminds us, “there’s something so valuable about not being in a relationship and not having to put the effort into a relationship, because you have so much time to invest in other people and to love people around you like your family, and your friends, and people in the world.”

If you are single this Valentine’s Day, and resist the culturally-mandated misery. “Why not,” Danya suggests, “work through improving yourself and getting yourself to a place where you’re really proud and confident of yourself instead of finding that confidence in someone else? Because if you have the mentality that eventually you will meet someone else and be happy, on some level you are filling and insecure void in yourself with someone else.”

Word, Danya.

Full transcript below the jump.
Hello my friends. Today, I wanted to touch upon an issue called relationships. This video is going to be mostly geared towards females and girls, it also applies to boys but not as much. Allow me to explain.

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of sentences that include phrases such as, “I’m so excited for when you get married.”

I was ten when this song came out. I remember it clearly, and how even at that age such a sexual song seeped into our elementary school lives. I still know all of the lyrics, basically by heart, and am compelled to belt out to it every time it happens to play (aka every time I dig out my old CDs and put it on).

The last time this happened, in the serendipitous company of Vanessa and Chloe, I was struck by just how goddamn sweet, and dare I say feminist, these lyrics actually are. Compared to the song lyrics of today, these almost seem like a farce they are so damn sweet.

Take for example:

Pour the wine, light the fire
Girl, your wish is my command
I submit to your demands
I will do anything, girl, you need only ask
I’ll make love 2 you like you want me to
And I’ll hold you tight, baby, all through the night
I’ll make love 2 you when you want me to
And I will not let go ’til you tell me to

In today’s pop culture world this kind of refrain is basically unthinkable. “I’ll make love to you, when you want me to“? What the hell kind of consensual bullshit is that? “And I will not let go ’til you tell me to”–this guy is actually offering to cuddle ALL NIGHT? These kinds of men just can’t exist.

Obviously Boyz II Men’s fifteen minutes of fame has come and gone. For all I know if they were making music today these lyrics would be more like “I’m gonna ride a train on this b—-.” But I was happy to see Colorlines report that these sweet R&B guys just got their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a few short weeks ago. It gives me comfort to know that 60 million people purchased their albums, and perhaps sometimes, like me, they pull them out of the back of their 90s closet and hear these super sweet and consensual lyrics.

What’s not to love about 60 million people singing the words “I’ll make love to you when you want me to” at the top of their lungs? I’d say that’s pretty good place to start with sex education.

Folks, it was inevitable. The “shit people say” meme has spilled out onto our humble feminist blogosphere. And it is chuckle-worthy (and in my experience, pretty spot on)! Check it out below. And add some “shit people have said to you” as a feminist in comments!

Related: Read Samhita on “shit girls say” for a more critical take.

Jos mentioned it briefly in Friday’s What We Missed, but did you see our girl Jessica Valenti rock it out on Anderson Cooper last week?

Cooper devoted an episode of his daytime show to purity balls, virginity pledges and the like. Jessica was representing on the show, pushing back against the dangerous rhetoric of other guests like Randy Wilson, the pastor who founded purity balls, and a family that takes their daughter to the balls (including two teenage girls). I think Jess did a great job of communicating clearly and rationally why purity balls hurt women without attacking or shaming the young women who were on stage with her.

Also check out the cameo appearance from Sarah, the 13-year-old girl whose badass video on the wrongs of slut-shaming recently went super viral, and deservedly so!

Check out some more clips over at Jess’ website.

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Why is it so effective? Because it is not real, it is a computer program that has been used for years to alter the way real women look. These avatars have become our global standard of beauty.

(If someone wants to make a transcript of this, I will love you forever.)

This video’s a bit old, but I hadn’t seen it before, and it’s amazing.

This gives me hope for the future right now.

Update: Huge thank you to Feministing reader Sorcha for typing up a transcript, which you can find after the jump. I also received transcripts from readers Caitlin and Libbie. The Feministing community rules.

Hi!
So, the 27th of August is kind of a big deal for me as a YouTuber.
*But Why?* Because, as of then, I will have been on YouTube for two years. Two Years. What? Crazy, right?
To commemorate this special occasion, I want to do the 7 Days 7 Topics Challenge. That title is pretty self-explanatory but it basically means that every day up to, and including, the 27th, I’ll be doing a video on a topic that’s important to me.
[Disclosure: I don't know everything, and I'm not going to pretend to. If you disagree with me on a topic, that's fine. Let's all just stay mature, respectful and classy ]

Anyway, let’s hop to it!

Today’s topic: slut shaming and why it’s wrong. So first off, what the hell is slut shaming? Slut shaming is the unfortunate phenomenon in which people degrade or mock a woman because she dresses in tight or revealing clothing, enjoys sex, has sex a lot or may even just be *rumored* to participate in sexual activity. The message that slut shaming sends to women is that sex is bad, having sex with more than one person is horrible, and everyone will hate you for having sex at all. That message is complete and utter, excuse my French, bullshit. Yes, I’m 13 and I said the word ‘bullshit’. Yes, I’m 13 and I’m talking about slut shaming. Deal with it.

Anyway, if you’ve given your consent, if you’re emotionally and physically ready for it, if you’re using proper protection, and if you feel safe and comfortable with your partner, then sex is good. It is nobody’s business but your own how many people you’re having sex with, or how much sex you have, and you don’t deserve to be hated on for being sexually active with more than one partner.

Slut shaming also contributes to rape culture/rape-supportive culture. Rape culture is a culture in which sexual violence against women is commonplace and in which prominent attitudes tolerate said sexual violence. Slut shaming contributes to this by sending the message that it’s OK to rape sluts because, by having too much sex or dressing in tight and revealing clothing, they’re somehow asking for it. Rape is caused by rapists, misogyny, structural violence and institutional tolerance, not by women’s clothing or make up, not the way she talks, or walks, not by her drinking, not by her ‘not being careful enough’, and certainly not be her being a slut.

Sonya Barnett and Heather Jarvis said: “being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence regardless if we participate in sex for work or pleasure”.

Slut shaming takes away women’s rights to express themselves sexually without fear of being scrutinized by men and other women, and it objectifies women’s bodies.

What I’m getting at here is that slut shaming is wrong at any age. I’m noticing a lot of other girls my age starting to say it and it just shocks me every time. How could they use such offensive language in such a casual manner? It’s like they don’t even know the meaning behind their words, and that’s the thing – they don’t know.

So if you watching this know somebody who slut shames, pass this video along. They could learn something. I mean, it might not work but how awesome would it be to change the opinion of even just one person? Simple actions can have the biggest impact.

[Inaudible] …tomorrow, for another topical video. Hasta la vista!

A really amazing video went viral over the last week featuring a young girl frustrated that all girl’s toys are marketed as pink–going as far as making the connection between companies wanting boys and girls to play with different things.

It’s amazing.

Along with this, Peggy Orenstein has a must-read op-ed in the NY Times taking on some of the nature vs nurture arguments made in support of the idea that girls just like pink (in response to LEGO putting out a new set for girls in pink), weighing both sides of the argument. She writes,

As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, one of the largest across the life span. It transcends not only culture but species: in two separate studies of primates, in 2002 and 2008, researchers found that males gravitated toward stereotypically masculine toys (like cars and balls) while females went ape for dolls. Both sexes, incidentally, appreciated stuffed animals and books…..

…..Score one for Lego, right? Not so fast. Preschoolers may be the self-appointed chiefs of the gender police, eager to enforce and embrace the most rigid views. Yet, according Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist and the author of “Pink Brain, Blue Brain,” that’s also the age when their brains are most malleable, most open to influence on the abilities and roles that traditionally go with their sex.

Every experience, every interaction, every activity — when they laugh, cry, learn, play — strengthens some neural circuits at the expense of others, and the younger the child the greater the effect. Consider: boys from more egalitarian homes are more nurturing toward babies. Meanwhile, in a study of more than 5,000 3-year-olds, girls with older brothers had stronger spatial skills than both girls and boys with older sisters.

At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature: the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them. So blithely indulging — let alone exploiting — stereotypically gendered play patterns may have a more negative long-term impact on kids’ potential than parents imagine. And promoting, without forcing, cross-sex friendships as well as a breadth of play styles may be more beneficial. There is even evidence that children who have opposite-sex friendships during their early years have healthier romantic relationships as teenagers.

Many people blindly defend arguments of nature, without fully taking into consideration the growing amount of research that suggests nurture often exaggerates nature and so many of the things that we think just are–are actually in response to a series of repetitive stimuli we have been exposed to over our lives.

And even if you are 100% in support of the argument that girls “naturally” are drawn to pink things, as adult women we can pretty much all agree that we are capable of doing a lot more than shopping, baking and picking out earrings. While LEGO’s attempts to appeal to girls is laudable–the larger question of the kinds of toys marketed to women and the impact that has on our long-term choices cannot go unheard. Toys we play with early in our life impact what we believe our possibilities are in the future. So then, why in 2012 are we still selling pink mini-kitchenettes to young girls?

(For the record, I used to shave the hair off of my barbie dolls heads–but then again–look how I turned out?!?)

[Video via]

Yesterday, several thousand women marched through Cairo in what historians described as the biggest women’s demonstration in modern Egyptian history.

From the AP:

Around 10,000 women marched through central Cairo demanding Egypt’s ruling military step down Tuesday in an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who dragged women by the hair and stomped on them, and stripped one half-naked in the street during a fierce crackdown on activists the past week.

The dramatic protest, which grew as the women marched from Tahrir Square through downtown, was fueled by the widely circulated images of abuses of women. Many of the marchers touted the photo of the young woman whose clothes were partially pulled off by troops, baring her down to her blue bra, as she struggled on the ground.

Although activists say the video of the “blue-bra girl,” which made the rounds in the U.S. this weekend, wasn’t as widely seen in Egypt, many Egyptian women seem to have been outraged by the way the military dismissed the brutality against the anonymous protester. At a news conference on Monday, a member of the ruling military council claimed the video was taken out of context (uh, sure) and brushed off a female journalist who demanded an apology to the women of Egypt.

Funny how fast that tune can change after thousands of women take to the streets…

Even before the protest was over, the military council issued an unusually strong statement of regret for what it called “violations” against women — a quick turnaround after days of dismissing the significance of the abuse.

The council expressed “deep regret to the great women of Egypt” and affirmed “its respect and total appreciation” for women and their right to protest and take part in political life. It promised it was taking measures to punish those responsible for violations.

Some protestors said the quick contrition was just a response to harsh criticism from the U.S. “This is an apology to one woman, Hilary Clinton,” said one. Color me just as cynical. After all, this is the same military junta that’s targeted women with sexual violence, forced female protesters to undergo “virginity tests” and largely shut women out of a revolution they helped to lead.

But hopefully they know that the world is watching as Egyptian women stand up and say, “The girls of Egypt are here.”

Watch the typically very composed Mitt Romney get all awkward and then try to sneak away when asked about gay marriage by an old white guy who turns out to be gay. Romney’s stereotypes about this guy kinda backfired, huh? Guess you never know when someone is going to totally fail at joining you in bigotry and end up being awesome.

ABC has a longer video clip, including Bob Garon’s reaction to Romney saying he should have less rights than straight people.