Women’s Space

Staceyann Chin, who has performed the past few years at Michfest and who is an amazing performer. Watch!

Naked women, scrambled tofu, rock music and free sex had under giant trees! This is what I heard would be happening in the backwoods, just outside of Hart, Mich. in August. And for years, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (Michfest) remained a bit of a scary legend that my more radically feminist underground counterparts would recount every time we brought up the patriarchy.

My own politics made it hard for me to envision a space that excluded the bodies of my brown brother, my ex-boyfriends, my immigrant gay brothers, etc. They are already excluded from so much, and I worried that this exclusively women-born-women space may be a sort of distorted discrimination in action.

Then, three years ago, I was invited to perform on the Land.

It was nothing I expected, and it was everything I expected. There were no male bodies — at least none that I could see. There was some scrambled tofu, but there were steaks on grills, too! And there were naked breasts, and trimmed pubes, and overgrown vaginas, and women covered in frills, and girls strutting heels along the dirt paths, and dykes in cowboy hats, and mud-cloth, and silver, and copper, and tanks, and lipstick, and whatever else you can imagine. It was all there. In the absence of men, the women seemed to have a little more space to just be. It scared the bejesus out of me. I felt uptight and a little prudish until I saw that there were lots and lots of women who did not want to get naked. After that, I relaxed and decided to embrace my more conservative, clothed convictions.

Two days in, I stopped seeing the naked breasts. I started looking into people’s faces, their eyes; and in moments, it felt like their hearts. In that first week, I began a re-examination of my most cynical and logic-driven self. Now, I am no softy. On average, I roll cynical and suspicious. I don’t want anybody doing shit with my chakras, nor my Chi. I hate when people tell me that the Spirit told them to do something to me. I don’t trust the Universe because it hasn’t always been kind to me. And the jury is still out on God. And when we have conversations — The Great Deity and I — it’s a lot of cussing and challenging and daring: “I dare you to show your face! Maybe you don’t exist! If you did, you would prove it to me!” Generally, if I can’t see it, I don’t want you saying shit to me about it.

But being in the woods, with all that tent-sex and showering under the stars and hearing the rain up close left me wondering why anybody would choose to live in the city.

Early, early in my childhood, I was a straight-up country kid. I bathed outside and carried water from the river. I climbed trees and got bitten by insects with no names. My brother and I dug holes and planted rocks. We ate dirt and stoned birds that sufficed as lunch. But, somewhere in my quest toward a more “civilized” life, I had forgotten the miracle of the sun warming a rock beneath my feet, the smell of dew on an unidentified plant. I had no recollection of the expression of a wild rabbit crossing my path. The distance between the land and me was as wide as the gulf between me and the country I fled so that I could be a cage-free lesbian.

That first year at Michfest was a challenging and wonderfully necessary epiphany. Between the port-a-potties and the freezing nights and the balmy days and sisterhood and the friendly greetings in the morning and the amazing women on stage all day and night, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was cranky because there were so few women of color. I was critical of the spelling of “womyn.” I was annoyed that I had to walk to everything. I was annoyed when I discovered that there was a quaint (free) subway system that was really a tractor that could take me from place to place. I was giddy about the sex I was having in the almost outdoors. I was just overwhelmed.

Cut to three years later. The Michigan Women’s Music Festival has forced me to admit that I do not know all the answers about what makes humanity tick. I only know that comprehensive feminist politics also include voices that are different from mine. I love the festival. I wish every oppressed group had it’s own little woodland week to gad about naked and pee in the bushes. I don’t know what it is about the unobstructed sky that makes me believe in something — and I’m not admitting to what that thing is — but it’s present at two in the morning when I am with a lover, and we can clearly see the Milky Way.

At first I thought the magic was about the dykes. Then I thought it was about the Land. But now I think that it is really about the spirit of the place. Lisa Vogel (one of the sexiest dykes to breath wood air) started this madness 33 years ago when she was a wee lass of just 19 years old. Last week, when I was leaving the Land, I hugged her farewell. Her embrace was sturdy and open and firm. In her arms, I felt loved and listened to and cared for and lucky to have lived some of the magic of this not-quite-perfect-but-open-to-improvement-feminist-festival-thing.

Link

H/t to Wildwomyn, a sister Festie.

Heart

This Wednesday, August 20 at 7pm on Feminist Magazine, women are flexing their creative muscles in a groundbreaking social change museum, a woman-made indy movie and a girl-powered magazine!
 
We talk to Masum Momaya, curator of  “Women, Power & Politics”, the current global online exhibit of the International Museum of Women, that aims to transform the way that women think about politics, and get them engaged in their communities worldwide.

We’ll hear how Nancy Gruver, founder of New Moon Magazine, gives thousands of girls a voice in the world - building their confidence by putting them in charge of writing and editing their own international magazine and how she and the teen editors plan to extend that to their new Web Community
 
And filmmakers Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert join us to talk about their movie “Finn’s Girl”, a multi-layered indy drama where lesbian family values, single parenting and reproductive rights all intersect in one story
 
You’ll hear all this with your hosts Lynn Harris Ballen and Conni-Su Siminski  Wednesday, August 20, at 7:00 pm  on KPFK’s, Feminist Magazine, 90.7 fm, Los Angeles, 98.7 fm, Santa Barbara and streaming live and archived at the web at kpfk.org.

www.IMOW.org
www.NewMoonClub.com
www.finnsgirl.com

http://www.feministmagazine.org

Note:  Michelle of the Feminist Magazine radio program will be sending me these announcements regularly so we can all get in on the latest feminist radio goodness.  She is also going to see if the program I did on Feminist Magazine a while back is still available.  Evidently programs are usually only saved for 90 days.  Thanks, Michelle!  – Heart

The Tomayko women and girls, left to right: Alex, Chandler, Chere, their mom, and the two youngest girls.

In the Holly Collins comments thread on this blog, a young woman named Chandler Tomayko wrote asking for help:

I was born in Fort Worth Texas. I lived there with my mother and younger sister until 1997. My sister’s father was verbally, emotionally and physically aggressive toward all 3 of us for several years. My mother in fearing for her life and ours, left her family, profession, home and lifestyle behind to move to a country where we knew no one. Costa Rica.

…The United States is attempting to extradite my mother on international parental kidnapping charges. My mother has been incarcerated for almost 11 months here in Costa Rica fighting the extradition charges.

It is unjust for them to persecute a woman for protecting her children, is that not what we expect mothers to do? My mother is being persecuted and my family is being torn apart. I am asking anyone with a sense of family and love to join our cause and help me in petitioning against the extradition of my mother and allowing her to come home.

Since that time I have been researching and working on this post about the Tomayko family.  Chere Tomayko’s story, like Holly Collins’ story, is horrifying.

An Abusive Relationship, Two Small Daughters

Chere Tomayko had the misfortune to connect with a man named Roger Cyprian in the late 80s. The young single mother of a young daughter, Chandler, at the time, she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter with Cyprian in 1989.  She named her daughter Alexandria.

Roger Cyprian was an abusive boyfriend and an abusive father.  In police reports filed in 1994 when Tomayko and Cyprian were engaged, for example, Tomayko told police Cyprian became enraged over a shelf she had built in a closet, grabbed her by the throat, slammed her down on the trunk of her car and continued to choke her in front of Alexandria, who was then 4.   Tomayko’s older daughter testified that Cyprian had abused her, as did Alex, who has post-traumatic stress disorder because of Cyprian’s abuse according to a psychiatrist who evaluated her.* Even publications hostile to Tomayko (more about that below) acknowledge that the Tomaykos’ reports of abuse ring true.  Alexandria remembers her father beating her mother. *

The Abuser Fights for Custody, the Judge Believes Him

After some years of abuse, Tomayko finally left Roger Cyprian.  He then went after custody of Alex, Alex being the last weapon he could use against her mother.  A Texas judge, William Harris presided over the custody case, which lasted six long years.  Harris didn’t believe Chere Tomayko when she said Cyprian was physically and sexually abusing her and her daughters, despite the police reports Tomayko had filed. He didn’t like it that Tomayko, protecting her daughters, sometimes resisted or defied visitation orders. He not only continued to order that Cyprian have unsupervised visitation despite the reports of abuse, in his final decision he ordered joint custody and ordered Chere Tomayko to live in the same county in which her and her daughters’ abuser lived.   Eleven years later, this judge is still making statements to the Costa Rican press in which he openly calls Chere Tomayko a liar, stating she didn’t have any “evidence” of Cyprian’s abuse, and that medical evidence could not “confirm” Tomayko’s reports that Cyprian sexually abused both Alex and her older daughter.   He didn’t believe Tomayko, he said, because she couldn’t produce any witnesses, as though there are ever any witnesses to a man’s sexual or physical abuse of his partner and daughters, except the women and girls themselves.  Harris stated that Cyprian produced “numerous witnesses.”  I’m sure Cyprian did.  I was thoroughly revolted researching the Tomaykos’ situation by the fans of Roger Cyprian, who seem to be more than willing, in an ongoing way, to join him in his ongoing attacks on the Tomayko women.

Tomayko Flees the U.S.

When Harris ordered Chere Tomayko to live near Cyprian and to share custody with him, she fled.  She left her life as a nurse, left her friends, family, her home, as women who are stalked and hunted by abusers often must if they are to survive.  She made careful plans so that it looked as though she had fled to Canada which she hoped would throw Cyprian off track long enough that she could flee to safety in, as it turned out, Costa Rica, a country completely foreign to her where she did not know anyone.  Although she suffers from Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder,she worked to support her girls as an English teacher and also selling goat’s milk and cheese. She got by with the help of an inheritance as well, something in which I am fairly certain, based on my research, Cyprian had an interest.

Cyprian stalked Tomayko with the dogged relentlessness of a man determined to destroy  her.  He hired private investigators for a while, and at one point he considered hiring someone to kidnap Alex. In 1999 two years after Tomayko fled, Cyprian was successful in getting a judge — probably Judge Harris — to terminate Tomayko’s parental rights.  This same judge awarded Cyprian a judgment of $350,000 plus interest and $500 a month in child support for Alexandria until she reached 18.

Tomayko: on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List Right There with Osama bin Laden

Cyprian then began working with two male FBI agents, one of whom eventually got Tomayko’s FBI wanted poster promoted to the 10 most wanted category,  right alongside Osama Bin Laden.

Tomayko Arrested by the International Police

The Tomaykos managed to live in relative peace in Costa Rica until about a year ago, when Chere Tomayko was finally arrested by INTERPOL (international police) and imprisoned at the request of the United States, which hoped to extradite her on charges of international parental kidnapping.   By this time, Alexandria was 18 and Chandler was 20.  Chere Tomayko had married a Costa Rican doctor with whom she had two more daughters.

”

Internet Attacks

Their mom in prison, Chandler (right above) and Alex (left above) created an online petition hoping to draw public attention to efforts of the U.S. to extradite her and to gather support.  They did not want to see or have anything to do with Roger Cyprian, whose abuse they well remembered .  Instead, Cyprian’s supporters showed up in the comments section to viciously attack the girls.  ”DHMom,” in comment number 10, Cyprian’s former girlfriend, with whom he also had a child, proudly boasts that she is the one who urged Cyprian to go to the FBI.   ”Business Law” in comment number 5 insists that Cyprian is just a “big teddy bear” and calls Chandler and Alex liars.  In connecting the dots on the internet, I found myspace pages evidencing that the commenters were members of Roger Cyprian’s family or cheering section, rooting him on in his dogged agenda of destroying the lives of Chere, Chandler and Alex Tomayko.  I think the money awarded to Cyprian was a factor, particularly since Alex is an adult and can no longer be forced to see Cyprian.  Chandler and Alex abandoned their petition effort and closed the petition. It is certainly Exhibit A of how deeply a woman can be hated — including by women — for doing nothing more than defending herself and shielding her children from abuse.

Heroes, Villains

Marta Iris Muñoz, director of the Public Defender’s office,  and Jeannette Carrillo, above, head of the National Institute for Women (INAMU) in Costa Rica, were heroes in this story.  They filed appeals on Tomayko’s behalf, wrote articles which were published in the newspapers in support of Tomayko, and gathered public support for her.  Until their involvement, the sympathies of at least one Costa Rica publication, A.M. Costa Rica, were consistently — unbelievably — with Roger Cyprian.  If you go to A.M. Costa Rica and do a search on “Chere Tomayko,” you will pull up many more articles than I’ve linked to here which evidence an ongoing hostility towards Chere Tomayko, despite documented abuse, both of her and her daughters, years of peaceful and responsible life in Costa Rica and Tomayko’s status as a naturalized citizen.

Tomayko Freed, Given Refugee Status

Tomayko, her husband, Javier Montero, two younger daughters, and Alex, behind her mom.

On Friday, July 26, a Costa Rican constitutional court ordered the immediate release of Chere Tomayko from prison, granting her refugee status on the basis that she was a victim of domestic violence and in danger if she returned to the United States.  She is the first woman to be granted refugee status in Costa Rica during a time in which extradition  was under way.  That same day, the U.S. Embassy canceled plans for the donation of an aircraft to the Seguridad ministry which had been scheduled for the following day, warning that “the case could threaten future U.S. judicial cooperation with Costa Rica.” *

Implications for U.S.-Costa Rica Relations

But President Oscar Arias cheered Tomayko’s release, stating that as a sovereign nation, Costa Rica has the right and obligation to protect human rights.  He also criticized the U.S. for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and for refusing to join the the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, a Court that prosecutes crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and crimes of aggression. Arias’s point is well taken:  A nation that flouts international law, as the U.S.  has and does,  is not credible behaving as a stickler over this kind of violation.*  All I can say is GOOD FOR HIM!

Conclusion

This is a horrifying story.  A young woman is battered, her young daughters are abused, and she attempts to protect them.  A judge calls her a liar and forces her to allow unsupervised visitation, then forces her to live near her abuser.  She flees, and in her absence, her abuser gets her parental rights terminated, a $350,000 judgment against her, and “child support” until the child he abused is 18.  He then goes to the FBI and talks the FBI into placing the woman he abused among the FBI’s  “10 Most Wanted”, as dangerous as Osama bin Laden.  He then charms Costa Rican reporters, who despite documented abuse take his side, publicly attacking the women he abused.  When his daughter turns to the internet for help, her abuser’s family and their friends — some of whom appear in other ways to be progressive — attack her viciously, demanding that their mother be extradited for “breaking the law”.  Meanwhile her daughters, now adults, speak their own truth,  only to be told again and again, including by this judge, that they are liars.  The U.S. then imprisons their mother and calls for her extradition.  This is a sadly, sadly common story of the way women are treated in this world when against all odds they defy male power and the power of nation states and risk their own lives to protect their families.  What is unusual is, a nation state rose to this woman’s defense, risking the perks and benefits of a cozy alliance with Uncle Sam.

Meanwhile, Roger Cyprian still hasn’t given up.  He has hired a Costa Rican lawyer to challenge Tomayko’s refugee status in court, even though her extradition will never reunite him with Alexandria, again, now an adult. There’s still all that money on the table after all.♥

*This information comes from three articles which are available for purchase in .pdf format from the Tico Times.  The articles are as follows:

Building a Case for Abuse
Gillian Gillers - August 8, 2008

Fugitive Rocks U.S.-Costa Rica Relations
Gillian Gillers - August 1, 2008

A Sovereign Error
Tico Times Staff - August 1, 2008

Heart

Tags: Erasure of Women's Lives, Exile, Female Ritual Servitude, Heroes, Internet Terrorism, Male Terrorism, War on Women

Get ready for some incredible reading over at Spinning Spinsters!

Heart

UPDATE:  I wired the money we collected for Julie last Friday; it was $351 to Julie, $24 for the cost of the wire.  I got this e-mail from Julie’s mom this morning:

Just wanted to let you know that Julie will be leaving … sometime early in the morning. it has taken her a little longer than anticipated to get her stuff together.. She picked up the money yesterday from western union, I gave her 290 to go with it, it was what my workmans comp check was. I’m so afraid for her, she told him that she was going because with him at home there was no other way for her to get out because his mom lives with them.  I took and got her oil changed, a filter for her ac, and a new fuel filter on Saturday morning, that was 149.  I just didn’t have it for the turne up but the guy said that as long as the wires and things aren’t too old they should be okay. She said that it seems to be getting better mileage, they also put the tires to the correct pressure.  Last month I had bought two new tires for her car and the month before we got her one, the other tire they said had really good tread it wasn’t but a year old.  She has a donut spare. 

Well just thought I’d update you, thank you and your readers for their help, as soon as I know she is on the road I will email you.

Tomorrow I will be wiring the funds we’ve collected so far ($375) for “Julie”, a battered woman embarking on a 2,400-mile trip in hopes of making a new life for herself and her daughter.   She has already registered for classes in her new city to get her GED, and she and her daughter will be living with Julie’s sister.  If you can contribute, please do by clicking this link or via the Donations button on the sidebar, noting that your contribution is for Julie.  I’ve been e-mailing with Julie’s mom for a while now, and I know that Julie’s needs are many, her resources few. 

Thanks to all of you who have contributed and who will contribute.  You are amazing, amazing women and I’m so proud to work with you and call you my sisters. 

Heart

Tags: Love Between Women, Male Terrorism, Practical Radical Feminism, Sisterhood

You Are Not Crazy

This is a very fine website dealing with verbal and emotional abuse in relationships.

Heart

About 50,000 Iraqi refugee women and girls are being sold for sex. There is a large sex trade in young Iraqi girls in the nightclubs of Damascus. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds—literally girls–not even women yet, and even children, are being sold.

by Suki Falconberg

Miss Iraq 2008, Myra Adel, noticed one of my articles on the Iraqi sex trade and e-mailed me about what she had seen when she visited Syria, a country where Iraqi refugee women and girls, rendered desperate by the war, are being sold for prostitution.

I asked for her permission to use the information, since e-mail correspondence is private; and she urged me to share it with the world, in hopes we will all help. Before I do, though, a little background, from other sources, on what is happening. About 50,000 Iraqi refugee women and girls are being sold for sex. There is a large sex trade in young Iraqi girls in the nightclubs of Damascus. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds—literally girls–not even women yet, and even children, are being sold. (MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, Salon Magazine, the UK Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, Human Rights Watch—all have covered the Iraqi prostitution situation due to the war. See “Sources” below for information and for some coverage of the prostitution picture inside Iraq as well.)

All the fancy phrases about a war being “A Right War” or “A Just War” have no meaning for her. Is the woman who must walk the streets of Baghdad and sell her body to feed her children in any way aware of the politicians, sitting in their neat offices, making the decisions that have destroyed her life? Would she consider this ‘a right war’ and ‘a just war’ and a war for her ‘freedom’? What do these men and women–who have endless debates, in their safe offices, about policy and weapons and troop reductions–have to do with her? The thing is: a woman never, ever thinks: what a great war this is—it has given me the ‘freedom’ to sell my body.

Myra Adel, Miss Iraq, adds a valuable eyewitness account and she also explains that her trip to Syria is the reason she is stepping down as Miss Iraq 2008: “They have been great to me but I will no longer be involved with the Pageant, due to the fact that I really couldn’t take it when I saw all those refugees in Syria being mistreated…seeing these people suffer made me ashamed….I don’t deserve to live in a classy apartment while other women are selling themselves.”

Miss Adel is shocked at what she saw in Syria, like the sale of ten-year-old girls. “What kind of sick demented human being would want to have sex with a 10-year-old?” she asks.

UN “High Commission for Refugees” Does Nothing But Collect Money to Line Government Officials’ Pockets

Ms. Adel also comments on the ineffectiveness of the UN High Commission for Refugees and on local corruption: “I couldn’t take it seeing the UNHCR just sitting there doing nothing, while governments like the Syrian government and the Jordanian government see this as an opportunity to manipulate the countries of the world to donate millions of dollars to Syria and Jordan and the money goes into the pockets of government officials and the U.N. staff.” She goes on to say that “the Syrian and Jordanian governments are taking advantage of the refugee situation to turn it into a profitable business.” And she thinks that greed and apathy on the part of Iraq and the U.S. are also responsible for the plight of the women. Of course, she could not be more on-target: the terrible sexual exploitation of women as a result of war is always extremely low on all governmental, political, and military agendas. It is important in so far as others can make money off the women’s bodies and use them for male convenience: but it is not an aspect of war where anyone pays attention to female safety, dignity, and well being at all.

It is interesting that Ms. Adel notes the failure of the UN in this matter since I have asked, in my own writings, where the UNHCR funds are going in Syria. The UN is extremely well funded. It would seem that not one single Iraqi teen should be for sale in a Damascus nightclub if all that money is going where it should be going. (For a good summary of the corruption problems at the UN, see Nile Gardiner’s article, “Kofi Annan’s ‘Legacy of Failure’” [11 Dec. 2006] at www.heritage.org). Someone to monitor the UN is one of Ms. Adel’s suggestions.

Ms. Adel also criticizes the current government in Iraq for not implementing social programs to help refugees. The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq headed by Yanar Mohammed, is a good source for the hardships of women forced into prostitution within the country.

Where the Money Should Be Going

Ms. Adel admits she is not a politician (neither am I, for that matter); but she makes some sensible suggestions for getting help to these girls. She believes that “humanitarian organizations headed by governments that have a…corruption-free status should monitor the money being sent to the refugees and the money should be given to them instead of the Jordanian or Syrian government.” And she would like to see “more NGO’s from Scandinavian countries and other European countries set up offices in Amman and Damascus.” She also thinks that getting people to talk about this issue would be a big step.

She says that the “annual government budget in Iraq exceeds 70 billion US dollars. Where is that money going? Power cuts are long, people get electricity for only an hour or two a day…water is cut off as well.” She would like to see some of the money going to fund the Iraqi women and girls in Syria who are so desperate they must sell themselves to survive. Ms. Adel brings up a great question—to repeat it—where is the money in Iraq going? Is US and Iraqi corruption, combined, so overwhelming that a few are getting enormously rich and the majority of Iraqis are suffering terrible hardships, and in the case of the subject of this article, the women in prostitution, those hardships mean bodies and lives that will be nightmares forever from this degradation.

A story entitled “Iraq’s Oil Profits Huge” by Kevin Hall (McClatchy Newspapers) came out just a few days ago (Aug. 5, 2008) and it reports that “Iraq…racked up $32.9 billion in oil earnings from January through June of this year.” In my view, with those kinds of funds, the Iraqi government could extensively care for all of those 50,000 suffering women and girls whose bodies and lives have been so degraded. It could provide for that 10-year-old Iraqi girl prostitute for the rest of her life and give her the counseling and care and protection and safety she deserves.

Forcing 10-Year-Old Girls to Have Sex for Money is War

In my view, the story of the 10-year-old Iraqi girl, forced to have sex for money, this is war. All the rhetoric of politicians and journalists cannot excuse what has happened to her. All the fancy phrases about a war being “A Right War” or “A Just War” have no meaning for her. Is the woman who must walk the streets of Baghdad and sell her body to feed her children in any way aware of the politicians, sitting in their neat offices, making the decisions that have destroyed her life? Would she consider this ‘a right war’ and ‘a just war’ and a war for her ‘freedom’? What do these men and women–who have endless debates, in their safe offices, about policy and weapons and troop reductions–have to do with her? The thing is: a woman never, ever thinks: what a great war this is—it has given me the ‘freedom’ to sell my body.

War never benefits women. Condi Rice, you are supposedly a woman. Explain to me how Operation Iraqi Freedom works? How does it benefit the 50,000 or more prostituted women and girls you have destroyed? Continue Reading »

When a young woman named Jessica wrote to me on Scarleteen to ask whether women who are pregnant should visit a crisis pregnancy center for resources and support, I warned her that CPCs are non-medical establishments that provide false information to women in order to scare them away from abortion as an option. I explained how easy it can be to be fooled by CPCs, even when you’re savvy, aware of practices CPCs typically employ — even, I soon learned, when you’re writing an article in protest of them. And then I offered Jessica a link to the American Pregnancy Helpline as an option for women looking for support sustaining a pregnancy and as an alternative to a CPC.

I proved my own point too well.

At first blush, Helpline’s website presents itself as supportive of all pregnancy options. I found several sites I know to be reputable and fully supportive of choice linking to the Helpline. But I should know to be wary of any sites offering aid to pregnant women. If I had, I would have found that the American Pregnancy Helpline is affiliated with a larger organization, the American Pregnancy Association (APA), whose site is linked to even by such organizations as the National Abortion Federation, the Our Bodies, Ourselves blog, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, WebMD, RAINN, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and, perhaps most disturbingly, MedlinePlus, a well-vetted consumer health site that is a project of the National Library of Medicine — all of whom are likely unaware of the extent of the APA’s connection to anti-choice causes. Once I found the link between the Helpline and the American Pregnancy Association, I found a whole lot more.

By the end of a day of deep digging, I discovered that both the American Pregnancy Helpline and the American Pregnancy Association and their founders have no record of being supportive of all reproductive options. In fact, the organizations both trace their origins to a crisis pregnancy center. I found misleading and medically incorrect information on both organization’s sites, including references to “partial-birth abortion” and the suggestion that future fertility or breast cancer has anything at all to do with having had an abortion. I learned that the Helpline is widely linked in CPC and anti-choice directories. And I soon noticed the strange absence of any information on contraception at the site for teens, while links to sites pushing ab-only proliferate. (I emailed the site immediately asking a few basic questions about their stance and background early but have yet to get any response.)

“As a longtime options and abortion counselor, I am blown away to learn that this place has sneaked under the radar to this extent,” says Parker Dockray, executive director of the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom and the RH Reality Check reader who first questioned my link to the American Pregnancy Association. “I think it is a wake up call for the pro-choice community that we cannot rely on circular referrals without doing our own due diligence every single time we find a new hotline purporting to do unbiased abortion or pregnancy options counseling.” After being informed of APA’s biases, the National Abortion Federation’s Vicki Saporta wrote, “This site is a prime example of how well some crisis pregnancy centers masquerade as legitimate reproductive health care organizations. Imagine how difficult it must be for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy to determine which sites and centers provide full options counseling and comprehensive reproductive health care services…We no longer link to this organization.”

A waltz through the Helpline’s web archives reveals that the organization was founded as a textbook CPC. At that time it was called America’s Crisis Pregnancy Helpline and didn’t claim any sort of medical accuracy or affiliation. To its credit, the organization’s information page did once admit that it doesn’t provide referrals to abortion services; the organization no longer makes that statement anywhere on the current site.

Misleading Readers Since 1999

This 1999 page demonstrates a clear bias. Note that the questions about finances, about “long-term physical and emotional effects,” knowledge of procedures, pressuring, changing one’s mind or “looking down on” women are asked about abortion but not about parenting or adoption. Parenting is a lifelong endeavor, so why does the options page pose no questions at all about readiness, desire or ability to parent? Same goes with adoption: no questions are posed; only a list of possible benefits is presented.

Abortion gets a list of “possible emotional side effects,” but none is listed for parenting or adoption, despite the fact that abortion “side effects” also commonly occur to women who parent or give children up for adoption. If you’re considering an abortion, the Helpline prods you to ask yourself, “What would an adoption plan look like?” but there is no such question about parenting, nor do the lists for adoption or parenting ask what an abortion plan would look like.

Apparently, only “when it comes to abortion” — not parenting or adoption — “there are many issues to consider when making a decision.”

The Helpline’s current online pregnancy test — which reports that you may be pregnant no matter how you respond — offers you the opportunity to see a “baby” in the womb “at every stage,” though that link leads to a page with no gestation dates listed for the few select photos it provides. It suggests access to free pregnancy testing through the Helpline but does not instruct readers to purchase a home test or to see a healthcare provider for a test.

Read the rest of the article here.

H/T to Heather Corinna, who wrote this expose and who asks that we spread the word.

Heart

Julian Real has the right idea:

Kyle: You need to understand all the entitlements and privileges that were in place that made what you did possible, and that you availed yourself of. You chose to be in a position where you’d have intimate access to women, some of whom might sometimes be drunk. You chose to buy a camera and keep it with you at all times, with which you could violate a woman. You chose to act “out” your confusion, in an aggressive and hostile way, rather than be with your feelings of confusion in a private, internal way: that is your entitlement and privilege as a man; that is not due to your history of childhood abuse. There is more to say. I will stop for now, until you welcome me to share more with you, hopefully publicly, on your blog, not privately, in email. Please also post, on your blog, the original comments that Nikki Craft and I made to your blogpost “A Different Kind of Payne” and explain why you didn’t accept them at the time. Please also post the comments that are welcomed to be public by those who write to you privately. Thank you.

I’ve been receiving e-mails from Julian Real ever since word of this assault by Kyle Payne was posted to the internet a few weeks ago.   To his credit, he asked for my thoughts about how he and other profeminist men should respond.  I haven’t responded to him directly yet, because I’ve been thinking about the questions he asked me, and for some other reasons.  One question he asked in his first e-mail was:

What is your opinion about him continuing to link to so many feminist blogs on his own blog?

Allecto also asked this early on.   I guess my thinking is, linking to radical feminist blogs will ultimately lead people to radical feminist thought and analysis, which is always good.  I can’t control who blogrolls me.  What I can control is my content.  I can make sure it is thoroughly and rigorously woman-centered and dedicated to the liberation and freedom of women.

I think Julian has the right idea here.  Most of us as radical feminist women have learned the hard way to give less and less of our energies to men, and none of our energies to attempting to change men, particularly in situations like this.  Talk about throwing good energy after bad!  Men will have to change themselves and help other men to change, calling them to account for their misogynist beliefs and acts,  if there is to be real revolution so far as men  are concerned.  We can make revolution for ourselves as women, without men’s support or participation and without men changing.   It would be great if they changed, of course.   But as a practical matter, that’s not up to us, as women.  And whether or not men change, we’ll be making revolution for women, our own people, no matter what.

Heart

The deadline for submissions to the next Carnival of Radical Feminists is Saturday, August 9!  You can submit your own or others’ blog posts, as many as you like, just make sure what you submit is consistent with radical feminism.  The next carnival will be hosted by Dissenter over at Spinning Spinsters, and you can send your submissions here.

Heart