Will another one bite the dust?

Back in May, Paste Magazine reported that there were only 13 feminist bookstores left in the United States and Canada. These were:

• Antigone Books - Tuscon, AZ
• Bloodroot - Bridgeport CT (Restaurant and bookstore)
• Bluestockings - NYC
• Bookwoman - Austin, TX
• Charis Books and More - Atlanta, GA
• Common Language Bookstore - Ann Arbor, MI
• In Other Words - Portland, OR
• Northern Woman's Bookstore - Thunder Bay, ON
• People Called Women - Toledo, OH
• A Room of One's Own Books and Gifts - Madison, WI
• Wild Iris Books - Gainesville, FL
• Women and Children First - Chicago, IL
• Womencrafts - Providence, RI

Now, Oregonlive.com reports that In Other Words in Portland will hold a meeting on Sunday, October 5 to dicuss what their community wants from them, and whether that need still exists.

I hope they make it.

A complicated mess

I'm actually rather cynical about Facebook, and don't log on there much. But when I do, I often find some amazing stuff. For instance, Kathleen Barry and Feminist Peace Movement both linked to this extraordinary post. Here's a short sample:

We, the undersigned 1960s radical feminists and current activists, have been concerned for some time about the rise within the academy and mainstream media of “gender theory,” which avoids naming men and the system of male supremacy as the beneficiaries of women’s oppression. Our concern changed to alarm when we learned about threats and attacks, some of them physical, on individuals and organizations daring to challenge the currently fashionable concept of gender.

Recent developments: A U.S. environmental organization that also calls itself radical feminist is attacked for its political analysis of gender. Feminist conferences in the U.K., U.S. and Canada are driven from their contracted locations for asserting the right of women to organize for their liberation separately from men, including M>F (male to female) transgendered people.

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) reports1 that queer activists defaced its published materials and trans activists threatened individual DGR members with arson, rape and murder. Bookstores are pressured not to carry DGR’s work and its speaking events are cancelled after protests by queer/transgender activists. At “RadFem” conferences in London2, Portland3 and Toronto4, trans activists accuse scheduled speakers of hate speech and/or being transphobic because they dare to analyze gender from a feminist political perspective. Both M>F transgender people and “men’s rights” groups, operating separately but using similar language, demand to be included in the Rad Fem 2013 conference in London called to fight against women’s oppression and for liberation.

I'm too tired to do justice to this topic tonight. In some ways, I have a lot of empathy with trans activists. In my own life, the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" has been a life-or-death issue. I don't doubt that trans people face violence and threats. But ultimately, I think the idea of "transgender" reinforces gender instead of undermining it. And I believe that people born into female-sexed bodies have the right to organize female-only space as a matter of resistance to our oppression.

That's not hate. That's a political opinion that trans activists strongly disagree with.

My admiration for the radical feminist post is tempered by a peculiar circumstance. it seems that the current operators of www.pandagon.net may have scooped up a Web address that the original operators inadvertently allowed to expire. The original Pandagon now appears at www.rawstory.com.

One of the original Pandagon folks, Amanda Marcotte, reacted with outrage to this. (Hat tip to Feminist Peace Network on Facebook for that link.) It's not clear exactly what connection the current operators of pandagon.net have to the authors of the radical feminist post, but it's a disquieting situation. I'm sad to see this difficult issue of gender politics blurred by this sort of confusion. It almost looks as if some radical feminists tried to get attention for their position (which I very much support and admire) by trying to make it appear that it came from people who are actually their political opponents.

I can't at all agree with Amanda Marcotte's characterization of radical feminists as "transphobic bigots," but I don't blame her for being pissed off that her url was swiped.

Feminist Library in danger of closing

While doing some advance research for an upcoming project in a library school class, I happened to do a Web search on "feminist library." This is how I discovered The Feminist Library in London, which

is a large archive collection of Women’s Liberation Movement literature, particularly second-wave materials dating from the late 1960s to the 1990s. We support research, activist and community projects in this field.

That's the good news. The bad news is, due to local government cutbacks and a privatization effort, it's in danger of closing.

Activist efforts are underway to save the library. You can read about these on the Save the Women's Library blog and on the library's Facebook page.

Supreme Court to reconsider Citizens United

According to the Washington Post, a recent decision of the Montana Supreme Court  might ultimately result in the US Supreme Court reconsidering its controversial ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Sounds like good news if it happens. Thanks to Progressive Breakfast for the link to the Washington Post news item.

Update: Mother Jones says that a group in Hawaii thinks they can use the 11th Amendment to overturn Citizens United.

Worth noting

TPM LiveWire covers the controversy over the decision of CBS to air an anti-abortion ad from Focus on the Family. This after CBS has consistently refused to accept "issue ads" from progressive groups.

Jill on Feministe also has an interesting analysis.

To read the mainstream media spin in the Tim Tebow / anti-abortion ad controversy, you’d think that we Hysterical Feminists ™ were at it again, getting whipped into a censor-happy frenzy just because some lady decided to have a baby.
The issue, though, isn’t that we disagree with Pam Tebow’s choice (although it’s worth pointing out that she had a choice she now wishes to take away from other women, and that the choice she made — to continue a pregnancy after she became ill while on a mission trip in the Phillipines — isn’t actually available to most women in the Phillipines, where abortion is illegal and most procedures happen clandestinely); it isn’t that we don’t think anti-choice ads should be allowed on the air; it isn’t that we think anti-choice views should be censored. It’s that CBS has, for the past few years, regularly rejected ads from left-of-center organizations — MoveOn.org, PeTA, and the United Church of Christ. CBS was clear that it did not accept ads on contentious or controversial subjects such as, apparently, democracy, animal rights and gay rights. But an ad about abortion, from Focus on the Family — one of the most radical, right-leaning organizations out there? Apparently totally fine.

Free speech and hate speech

A friend of mine on Facebook posted links to two YouTube videos about some outrageous acts of right-wing incitement that have taken place recently. First is a video of the marvelous Rachel Maddow talking with former religious-right organizer Frank Schaeffer about the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Second is a video about anti-abortion vigilante Randall Terry encouraging people to burn Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid in effigy this Hallowe'en because they will "burn in hell" for sponsoring health insurance reform legislation.

Watching these videos reminded me how tricky and complicated the issue of free speech is.

The right to free speech is not trivial. It is a right that needs to be used carefully and responsibly, because the pen, and the video camera, are indeed mightier than the sword. Legal words can inspire illegal actions that have terrible consequences. Just because you have the constitutional right to say something doesn't mean it is morally right for you to say it. If right-wing rabble-rousers describe their opponents as "murderers," and invite their supporters to symbolically burn them at the stake, they oughtn't express surprise if listeners take their words as the justification for real acts of violence. And it's really not fair for them to whine when commentators such as Rachel Maddow use their own free-speech rights to point this out.

I suspect that some folks would like to go one step further and make it illegal for evil-speakers like Bill O'Reilly and Randall Terry to spew their poisonous rants. I'm guessing these folks would say that it's okay to oppose abortion rights, and it's okay to oppose health care reform -- but you need to be moderate and responsible in the way that you do this. And if you're not, there ought to be some kind of legal penalty. We have to stop hate speech before it destroys us. To these folks, I would like to say, not so fast. Yes, we need to stop hate speech, but passing a law to do that is likely to have serious unintended consequences.

Back when I was in college, I took a course in constitutional law. This was maybe 30 years ago, so I apologize that I don't remember the names of all the cases that we studied. But here is how I remember the case law on free speech. Remember how you don't have a right to "yell `fire!' in a crowded theater?" Sounds reasonable, right? Well, it came from a case involving people resisting the draft during World War I. There was a law -- I think it was called the Espionage Act -- that said that if you encouraged people to avoid military service, you were committing a felony and could be sent to jail. (You remember World War I, right? That was supposed to be "the war to end all war," but all it accomplished was the humiliation and impoverishment of Germany -- which set the stage for World War II.)

Wait. I just had a brainstorm. Due to the miracle of Wikipedia, I don't have to dig through the stuff in my junk room to see if I kept those old notes from college. I can point you to an entry about the Espionage Act of 1917, which leads me to an entry about Schenck v. United States, the case in which the supposedly liberal Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. penned the famous phrase about fire in a crowded theater. In case this isn't absolutely clear, I want to emphasize the Holmes wrote a concurring opinion for the court in upholding this act, which had such bizarre consequences as the following:

The poet E. E. Cummings and his friend William Slater Brown, then volunteers in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in France, were arrested on September 21, 1917. Cummings' "espionage" consisted mainly of his having openly spoken of his lack of hatred for the Germans.^[2] The two were sent to a military detention camp, the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne, Normandy, where they languished for 3½ months. Cummings' experiences in the camp were later related in his novel, The Enormous Room.

Publications which the Wilson Administration determined were guilty of violating the Act "were subject to being deprived of mailing privilege, a blow to most periodicals," according to Sidney Kobre's book Development of American Journalism. A section of the Act allowed the Postmaster General to declare all letters, circulars, newspapers, pamphlets, packages and other materials that violated the Act to be unmailable. As a result, about 75 newspapers either lost their mailing privileges or were pressured to print nothing more about World War I between June 1916 and May 1918. Among the publications which were censored as a result of the Act were two Socialist Party daily newspapers, the New York Call and the Milwaukee Leader. The editor of the Leader, Victor Berger, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment after being convicted on a charge of conspiracy to violate the Act; this was later reversed on a technicality. Other publications banned from the mails were the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) journal Solidarity, American Socialist, bohemian radical magazine The Masses, German-American or German-language newspapers, pacifist publications, and Irish nationalist publications (such as Jeremiah O'Leary's Bull).

I can also point you to a biography of the grand old socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was imprisoned under the Espionage Act for giving this speech. He compared the despotic rulers of Germany with the supposedly democratic rulers of the United States, and found that they ruled in just about the same way. The speech is as gentle as it is eloquent, but ya know, it certainly implied that the US government was illegitimate and ought to be replaced.

My point should be obvious. Laws restricting "hate speech," or laws restricting criticism of the government are just as likely -- or more likely -- to be used against progressives, feminists, and left-wing radicals than they are to be used against right-wing haters like Randall or O'Reilly.

Any feminist worth her salt has been accused of being a "man-hater." Advocates for the rights of people of color routinely accused of hating white people. Critics of US intervention in other countries are routinely accused of trying to destroy the United States.

As painful as it is to contemplate, in order for the right of free speech to be safe, it has to apply to the hateful and immoderate as well as to the thoughtful and responsible. We need to distinguish between hate speech and hate crimes.

There is a difficult but very effective way to stop the haters. We have to do what Rachel Maddow does. We have to speak out against them.

They had a democracy until we crushed it

Stephen Kinzer has an excellent post over at guardian.co.uk about the sordid history of US intervention in Iran. Kinzer describes the 1953 US overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq. The US coup resulted in the re-installation of the despotic Shah Reza Pahlavi. The shah's tyranny--with the complete support of the US government--resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the current tyrants to power.

The demonstrators in Iran who are protesting the possibly fraudulent results of the recent elections are carrying pictures of Mossadeq. Their message is that they want freedom without foreign intervention.

As Kinzer points out:

The US sowed the seeds of repression in Iran by deposing Mossadeq in 1953, and then helped bathe Iran in blood by giving Saddam Hussein generous military aid during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Militants in Washington who now want the US to intervene on behalf of Iranian protesters either are unaware of this history or delude themselves into thinking that Iranians have forgotten it. Some of them, in fact, are the same people who were demanding just last year that the US bomb Iran – an act which would have killed many of the brave young protesters they now hold up as heroes.

America's moral authority in Iran is all but non-existent. To the idea that the US should jump into the Tehran fray and help bring democracy to Iran, many Iranians would roll their eyes and say: "We had a democracy here until you came in and crushed it!

For more information, see Wikipedia's biography of Mossadeq. A New York Times history of the C.I.A. in Iran is here.

"Freedom of speech" versus women's privacy and safety

You can read about the disturbing case of Barnes v. Yahoo over at Feminist Law Professors. Here is the more recent post, and here is the original post.

Update on email hoax case

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that a Massachusetts judge has ruled that a dorm room search for evidence of a "prank" email was illegal.

I reported on this case a about a month ago. While the email in question wasn't criminal, it wasn't exactly a "prank," either. It involved outing a gay student to a campus electronic mailing list. Unfortunately, the student whose dorm room was searched was identified as a suspect on the dubious grounds that he had computer expertise.

What's a lesbian civil libertarian to think?

Okay. It's my gut feeling that outing people is kind of rude and uncalled for. But is it a criminal offense? And how far should an institution go in trying to catch someone who does this?

If accurate, this story, courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is truly bizarre.

On Friday, EFF and the law firm of Fish and Richardson filed an emergency motion to quash and for the return of seized property on behalf of a Boston College computer science student whose computers, cell phone, and other property were seized as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay. The problem? Not only is there no indication that any crime was committed, the investigating officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself supported a finding of probable cause to seize the student's property.

According to another EFF report:

Some of the supposedly suspicious activities listed in support of the search warrant application include: the student being seen with "unknown laptop computers," which he "says" he was fixing for other students; the student uses multiple names to log on to his computer; and the student uses two different operating systems, including one that is not the "regular B.C. operating system" but instead has "a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on."

I wondered if there was an "opposing point of view," and did a quick web search on "boston college gay email investigation". Every reference to the story that I found seemed to be computer tech web sites that were repeating the EFF angle. Another quick search of mainstream news organizations found no reference to the story. I posted a request for information on the Boston College web site, and held this post for a few days to see if they responded. They didn't.

It sounds to me as if Boston College has gone way overboard in trying to punish the student they think was responsible. And the idea that using a command prompt is suspicious behavior would be funny, if it weren't so frightening. (Just as an aside, here, you don't need to use Linux to get a command prompt. Your Windows machine has one if you just look under "Accessories.") But maybe the story is more complicated than EFF is letting on. EFF seemed to gloss over the nature of the email in question. Was it ugly, vulgar, threatening?

Ironically, Boston College, an institution run by the Jesuits, is no haven for gay rights. At one time, it seems to have made a list of the nation's most homophobic campuses, although another article in the Boston Phoenix suggests that this reputation is not entirely deserved.

Radical feminists may remember Boston College as the one-time employer of philosopher Mary Daly. In 1999, Daly left Boston College after settling a lawsuit before it went to trial. Daly had sued BC for violating her tenure and free-speech rights, after the institution tried to force her to admit men to her regular classes.

Anti-free-speech trade agreement?

The so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is being pushed to a quick ratification with almost no public information or discussion.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has information here. This link also brings up a petition you can sign to ask your senators to request more information from the United States Trade Representative and to hold Senate hearings on the treaty.

WikiLeaks has more information about ACTA here.