we take what we get

I haven't gone on a serious feminist crusade in at least 5 posts, so it's high time to be outraged at something once again. Well it's actually not too terribly infuriating, just an interesting observation.

In a recent online Q&A from New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, a reader asked this question: "I find it a bit peculiar that the two women columnists, Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins, are satirical and humorous. I adore their writing, and generally think they are spot on, but it is almost like you cannot get a "serious" woman columnist. Do you agree?"

Rosenthal responded by essentially saying he would be the "last person alive" to say either woman wasn't a serious columnist. GOOD FOR YOU. Though I admit I'm not as familiar with Collins' work, Maureen Dowd is usually my first stop if I'm perusing the NYT's editorial pages. (It used to be Nicholas Kristof, but for a while they were charging for his stuff online, so I got out of the habit cause I'm cheap.) So anyway, I just wanted to say I appreciate Rosenthal standing up for his staff, and would hope that in future queries, readers take a minute and think about the fact they would never criticize a paper for only having satirical male columnists.

In other woman rage, the NYT staff editorial today, titled "Women, extremism, and two key states," deals with the recent activity worldwide that shows us once again the high cost some of our world pays for being born with a vagina. In Afghanistan, marital rape is now essentially legally sanctioned. In Pakistan, a woman was publicly flogged for denying a marriage proposal. In Saudi Arabia, a judge refused to nullify the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a man of 58.

Even though some steps are being taken globally in the right direction (example: 10 villages in Niger have officially denounced female circumcision, and the Pakistani chief justice rebuked the attorney general for allowing the flogging), we still aren't there. It's one thing to see the videos of starving children and say "oh, that's sad." But for most of those children, they aren't hungry because their country's religion or cultural heritage forbids them food.

Even in the states, the leading cause of death for most pregnant women is homicide, usually by a close intimate partner.

So stand up for the vaginas around the world. Religious, cultural, or otherwise, we all deserve to live a life of safety, especially from the government or power-holding group of any given society. Maybe Maureen Dowd can write a sarcastic column about it, since apparently that's the only style some readers feel is used by women. Oh wait, she already has:

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