miércoles, 29 de julio de 2009

Procuradora: m. y f. Persona que en virtud de poder o facultad de otra ejecuta en su nombre algo.

La Ley de la Oficina de la Procuradora de las Mujeres, Ley Núm. 20 de 11 de abril de 2001, dispone:

La designada [como Procuradora] deberá ser una mujer de reconocida capacidad profesional e independencia de criterio, que se haya distinguido por su compromiso en la defensa de los derechos de las mujeres, en la lucha por la eliminación de todas las manifestaciones de opresión y marginación, por su respeto a las diferencias y la diversidad y que sea conciente de la necesidad de un análisis continuo de la situación de las mujeres desde una perspectiva de género.


A pesar de lo anterior, el Gobernador Fortuño acaba de nominar a la ex jueza del Tribunal de Apelaciones, Ivonne Feliciano Acevedo, como Procuradora de las Mujeres. Después del fiasco de las dos anteriores nominadas (quienes contaron con el apoyo de organizaciones de mujeres), el Gobernador aprovechó las entrevistas para reclutar a un nuevo presidente de la CEE, e, inspirado, decidió llenar la vacante de la Oficina de la Procuradora de las Mujeres. Sin discusión, ni reflexión.

Tuve la oportunidad de escuchar algunas de las respuestas de la ex jueza Feliciano a preguntas de la prensa. Contestó como si fuera nuevamente una nominada a la judicatura y no a una Procuraduría. Entre otras cosas, dijo que, su posición sobre el aborto era "personal", pero que respeta el estado actual de Derecho. Sobre su experiencia en las causas de las mujeres, contestó que trabajó mucho para sacar a su hijo hacia adelante, cuando le preguntaron por la custodia compartida dijo que podía ser maravillosa y que eso era parte de la plataforma del Gobernador (!!!!!!!).

Las mujeres necesitamos a una Procuradora que no se conforme con lo dispuesto por ley. Necesitamos a una Procuradora con la suficiente experiencia de trabajo en las causas de las mujeres, como para saber que el derecho a abortar debe defenderse a todo pulmón no sólo porque es legal, sino porque es una protección a la libertad, dignidad y felicidad de las mujeres. Necesitamos una Procuradora que luche por la vida de nosotras, las heterosexuales, las lesbianas, las madres, las negras y las blancas, las casadas y las solteras, las ancianas y las niñas... a todas... y que esté dispuesta a gritar, si hace falta, por cualquiera de nosotras. En fin, no necesitábamos a una jueza, necesitamos a una guerrera.

El tiempo dirá.

Aquí nota de El Nuevo Día.

viernes, 24 de julio de 2009

Violador estudiantil tenía su propio modus operandi

viernes, 24 de julio de 2009
Sara M. Justicia Doll / Primera Hora
En el área de Río Piedras el año pasado se registraron cuatro violaciones. Una en julio en la urbanización Hyde Park, otra en agosto en Reparto Metropolitano, otra en Santa Ana y se entiende que se registró otro caso en esa misma zona en octubre.

En aquel momento sí se habló de un violador en serie. El hombre se movía en un mismo lugar y el modus operandi era similar siempre. Entraba al hospedaje, robaba celulares y dinero, computadoras, iPods y violaba a estudiantes universitarias jóvenes.

Después del acto, les pedía perdón y también les hacía la advertencia de que nada funcionaría si llamaban a la Policía porque no podrían levantar evidencia.

Curiosamente, aún no se puede procesar a nadie por dichas violaciones.

A finales de año se arrestó a Lennin Reyes Ríos, un joven de 29 años, por un evento ocurrido el 22 de octubre de 2008, cuando se le imputó atacar a una joven y tocarle sus partes íntimas en su casa en Río Piedras. En ese momento, se habló de que finalmente se había atrapado al violador riopedrense y, en efecto no se han vuelto a dar más casos. Sin embargo, el caso fue desestimado por falta de prueba contundente. Pero, no se le pudo relacionar con las cuatro violaciones y no se le radicaron cargos por éstas.

En entrevista con el superintendente José Figueroa Sancha, éste defendió la labor que hace la División de Delitos Sexuales.

Sí, pero en el caso de Río Piedras, aun cuando hubo un arresto, no se pudieron levantar esos cuatro casos.

Cuando la Policía tiene la evidencia es cuando el caso se somete; el fiscal tiene que estar de acuerdo con que la evidencia es suficiente y entiende que el caso se puede sostener. La determinación la hace el fiscal, dijo el jefe policiaco.

En cuanto a la evidencia que pudiese haber y que se deba compartir para poder llegar a la determinación de que se trata de un violador en serie, Figueroa Sancha confía en la labor de Servicios Técnicos sobre la evidencia que se levante en la escena.

¿Cómo está la comunicación con el Instituto de Ciencias Forenses y la rapidez del análisis de prueba?

Tenemos reuniones de seguridad cada dos semanas y coincido con la directora del ICF en que hemos agilizado mucho pruebas de serología y protocolos de patología.

En los casos recientes ocurridos en Carolina, Guaynabo, Bayamón y San Juan se produjo un boceto en una de las instancias ocurridas en un solar baldío en Montehiedra.

La División de Delitos Sexuales distribuyó el boceto de un hombre que violó a una mujer el 22 de junio, en un solar baldío detrás del Banco Popular del centro comercial Montehiedra.

El boceto describe al sujeto como de tez trigueña, ojos rasgados color ámbar, nariz chata, pelo oscuro, de 5’3” a 5’5” de estatura y gordito.

Otro boceto del área de Carolina de un incidente relacionado, guarda parecido con el anterior.

Para brindar información a las autoridades, puede llamar al (787) 793-1234 , extensión 3165.

Ultrajadas por el sistema

Ultrajadas por el sistema
viernes, 24 de julio de 2009
Farasch Lopez Reyloz / Para Primera Hora
María (nombre ficticio) fue violada en mayo por uno de dos sujetos que escalaron su apartamento y cuya descripción coincide con la del par que está sembrando el pánico entre los residentes del sector Parque Escorial en Carolina.

Pero las escenas realmente ultrajantes las vivió horas más tarde cuando, tras haber sido violada, requirió ayuda de las autoridades y los distintos organismos gubernamentales.

El caso de María, que ocupó la portada del miércoles de Primera Hora, cobra mayor dramatismo cuando se toma en cuenta el trato que recibió tras su violación.

A su hogar enviaron a tres policías varones que, según la joven, “se mostraron muy sensibles”. Los agentes la trasladaron al Centro Médico, allí informó que había sido víctima de una violación y las enfermeras le instruyeron, sin la menor delicadeza, que tomara un número y se sentara a esperar.

La espera por un médico y atención clínica adecuada comenzó a las 4:00 de la madrugada y se extendió hasta las 2:00 de la tarde, hora en la que finalmente un médico le administró una primera dosis de medicamentos y comenzó a ser atendida de acuerdo con el supuesto protocolo.

Durante sus largas horas aguardando para ser atendida tuvo que ir en repetidas ocasiones al baño, aun sabiendo que podría hacerse cada vez más difícil colectar material genético o de cualquier otra índole que sirviera de evidencia para su caso. María preguntó en múltiples ocasiones a las enfermeras la razón de la demora en atenderla, y ellas le indicaron que no tenían el rape kit que se utiliza en estos casos y que debían buscarlo en otro edificio. En un momento contempló irse a un laboratorio privado para hacer las pruebas pertinentes y poder dar por terminada la difícil experiencia, pero las enfermeras le indicaron que para que la investigación pudiera darse, las pruebas debían hacerse allí.

“A eso de las 2:00 p.m. un médico me da a tomar la pastilla Plan B, el antibiótico Citromax y una pastilla que me dijeron era para atacar al virus del sida en caso de contagio. No sé por qué se tardaron tanto, no había emergencias allí”, explicó.

En todo el tiempo que estuvo en el hospital nadie se acercó a ofrecerle ayuda psicológica ni a explicarle el procedimiento que se iniciaría para la investigación. “Las enfermeras se quedaron con toda la ropa, con las muestras de mi cabello, de vellos púbicos, y no sé para qué, porque en mi caso no ha pasado nada”, cuenta, mientras indica que decidió hacer público su caso porque teme que sus atacantes son los mismos que atacaron a las mujeres de Parque Escorial y porque está convencida de que es preciso denunciar la ineficiencia de las autoridades para cumplir ágilmente con el protocolo, prestar ayuda a las víctimas y hacer la investigación policiaca adecuada.

La misma tarde del domingo, tras darle de alta del hospital, decidió ir al CIC de Bayamón, donde asegura que algunas de las preguntas que fueron parte de su entrevista apuntaban a responsabilizarla o a que de algún modo ella hubiera provocado la violación.

Por otra parte, la víctima de Vistas del Río en Trujillo Alto, la única que llegó a ver el rostro de uno de los sujetos, asegura que el agente Matos a cargo de la investigación de su caso retrasó por tres semanas su cita con la bocetista alegando que ésta tenía mucho trabajo. Cuando la víctima logra la cita, la bocetista le indica delante del agente que siempre estuvo disponible y le muestra su calendario para demostrárselo. Asimismo, la joven, que no llegó a ser violada porque convenció al atacante de que estaba embarazada, cuenta que la próxima víctima que hubo en su comunidad, en donde se reportaron unos cinco casos, tenía una alarma y de la compañía alertaron a la Policía, notificándole que tenían un código que indicaba rehenes. La Policía acudió, pero al tocar la puerta y nadie responder decidieron irse.

Ni una humillación más

24-Julio-2009 | EVA PRADOS
ABOGADA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS


No hay norma social y legal más reconocida que “la dignidad humana es inviolable”. Esta sencilla oración es piedra angular de grandes constituciones de gobierno, tratados de derechos humanos y de todas las religiones.

La dignidad no es monopolio de “las mayorías” ni bastión protegido de grupos dominantes. Al contrario, su origen es precisamente para proteger al individuo frente a las embestidas de “las mayorías” y “del poder”.

No podemos continuar mirando para el lado, cuando a nuestros vecinos se les humilla y excluye de la sociedad por el único criterio de su orientación sexual o identidad de género. Estamos como en la época de la esclavitud que humillábamos al negro, por su color de piel, catalogándolo de “propiedad” y no como persona, sin reconocerle los mismos derechos que al hombre blanco.

Basta de escondernos en supuestos argumentos religiosos o moralistas para justificar la humillación. Ni es cristiano ni es moral violar la dignidad humana. Sólo es “anormal” el que no sigue la norma ampliamente reconocida: “No violarás la dignidad del otro”. Al gobernador, al legislador y al juez hay que recordarles que su deber constitucional es proteger y garantizar el mayor respeto a la dignidad humana. Es inmoral e inconstitucional más dilaciones a su deber de proteger que a nadie se le discrimine ni se le etiquete en abstracción de su cualidades como persona.

No queda más tiempo, hay que prohibir que una persona más sea humillada negándosele el sustento y un ambiente de trabajo adecuado. Urge aprobar ya el P de la C 1725 para legislar contra el discrimen por orientación sexual, incluyendo la identidad de género, tanto en el empleo como en los lugares públicos y en acceso a vivienda.

De igual manera, que ni a una persona más se le humille diciéndole que no es capaz de tener una familia, cuando existe amor y el deseo de la pareja de unir sus vidas. No permitamos que una persona más sea humillada públicamente, diciendo que no puede adoptar a una criatura, por elementos que nada tienen que ver con el derecho del niño o niña a un hogar feliz.

Paremos la humillación. La exclusión social sólo deja amargos recuerdos. No seamos cómplices de la violación a la dignidad del otro. No demos lugar a que las próximas generaciones nos vean como una sociedad tan bárbara o más que la que nos antecedió.

miércoles, 22 de julio de 2009

Vínculos Apasionados

Plantea Judith Butler que no hay producción de sujeto sin un vínculo apasionado ("passionate attachment") a aquél o aquello a lo que se está subordinado, por lo que la subordinación en sí misma es central en la producción del sujeto (Butler, 1997). Plantea igualmente que si las condiciones de poder van a persisitr, éstas tienen que ser reiteradas y que el sujeto es el espacio de esa reiteración. El sujeto se produce a través de lo que aparece como su discurseada identidad constitutiva. Puesto de esta manera, cabría preguntarse, ¿cuál es el "passionate attachment" del feminismo con el régimen patriarcal? Pienso que éste radica justamente en su imposibilidad de abandonar la categoría misma: que es precisamente esa insistencia del feminismo de seguir reforzando, reesencializando, naturalizando la categoría mujer la que, hoy por hoy, continúa paradójicamente reproduciendo lo patriarcal.

Madeline Román. "Vínculos Apasionados: volver sobre la pregunta, ¿qué es una mujer?"(Revista Identidades, 2004)

¿No debió, mejor, preguntarse la prof. Román cuál es el vínculo apasionado entre las mujeres y el régimen patriarcal? ¿Acaso no puede el feminismo visibilizar ese vínculo, desconstruirlo, reinventarlo? Si existe el "feminismo" (no sé a cuál de todos los feminismos se refiere), es porque existen las "mujeres". El "esencialismo", al parecer, discurre por ambos lados.

viernes, 17 de julio de 2009

¡Feministas hondureñas en Resistencia!



¡Alerta, alerta, alerta que camina, la lucha feminista por América Latina!



¡Micheletti, eres un machista!

jueves, 16 de julio de 2009

Sobre el mito de la "imparcialidad"

Las preguntas de los senadores que pasan juicio sobre la nominación de la Jueza Sonia Sotomayor al Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos han hecho hincapié en indagar si Sotomayor es capaz o no de ser "imparcial", y echar a un lado sus experiencias de vida como mujer y latina. A ratos, la audiencia parecería ser una competencia entre republicanos y demócratas, los primeros negando dicha imparcialidad de la jueza y los segundos, defendiéndola. Nadie, hasta ahora, ha expresado, a) que la "imparcialidad" es imposible y b) que aún si fuera posible, no es eso lo que queremos de un juez o de una jueza. Si el propósito judicial es "hacer justicia" (como tanto nos repiten una y otra vez) tenemos que desmitificar la idea de que la "la justicia es ciega". Las preocupadas por este tema tenemos que aprovechar el espacio para hablar de estas cosas (aunque ello signifique problematizar las expresiones de la propia Sotomayor).

La feminista posmoderna Iris Young en su ensayo The Ideal of Impartiality and the Civic Public nos dice:

... the ideal of impartiality in moral theory expresses a logic of identity that seeks to reduce differences to unity. The stances of detachment and dispassion that supposedly produce impartiality are attained only by abstracting from particularities of situation, feeling, affiliation, and point of view. These particularities still operate, however, in the actual context of action. Thus the ideal of impartiality generates a dichotomy between universal and particular, public and private, reason and passion. It is, moreover, an impossible ideal, because the particularities of context and affiliation cannot and should not be removed from moral reasoning. Finally, the ideal of impartiality serves ideological functions. It masks the ways in which the particular perspectives of dominant groups claim universality, and helps justify hierarchical decisionmaking structures.

The ideal of impartial moral reason corresponds to the Enlightenment ideal of the public realm of politics as attaining the universality of a general will that leaves difference, particularity, and the body behind in the private realms of family and civil society [...]


Les sugiero, además, que lean esta entrada del blog de la amiga Erika Fontánez Torres.

Estereotipos sexistas

Si alguién tiene duda sobre si a las mujeres aún nos juzgan por estereotipos sexistas... que vea esto y entienda.



Gracias Myrta por el enlace.

martes, 14 de julio de 2009

Mujer, Puertorriqueña y lista para resolver mejor que el Juez Roberts!!!

Seguimos las audiencias de confirmación de la Jueza Sotomayor. Ayer escuchamos su discurso inicial, muy "neutral", con el que la Jueza manifestó su intención de ser "fiel a la ley" (whatever that means!). Tod@s sabemos que los jueces nominados al Supremo tienen que seguir un "libreto" para no pisar callos (eso, claro, en los países en que se toman en serio el proceso de confirmación, porque aquí en Puerto Rico confirmaron a dos jueces y a una jueza por la vía del fast track, creo que ni sabíamos el segundo apellido de los nominados cuando ya habían sido confirmados).

(Foto: Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Ayer llamaron la atención algunos manifestantes de eso que llaman "pro life", y preguntaban a la Jueza sobre los "no nacidos". Eso, mientras los republicanos reiteraban su secuestro de la palabra "empatía". ¿Quién me dice qué relación hay entre esos manifestantes y esos senadores republicanos?

Hoy comienza la sesión de preguntas y respuestas, y estamos listas para denunciar las preguntas sexistas. Por cierto, ya ayer un senador le advirtió a Sotomayor que a menos de que sufra un "meltdown" , ella será confirmada. ¿Cómo dice que dijo? Ay ay ay...

Si quieren una análisis profundo, certero y crítico de este proceso de confirmación y los distintos discursos envueltos, les invito a visitar el blog de la amiga Erika Fontánez Torres:

http://poderyambiente.blogspot.com/

Sigamos.

lunes, 13 de julio de 2009

Dangerous Resentment

Judith Warner blog

Two years ago in June, Bridget Kevane, a professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Montana State University, drove her three kids and two of their friends — two 12-year-old girls, and three younger kids, age 8, 7 and 3 — to a mall near their home in Bozeman. She put the 12-year-olds in charge, and told them not to leave the younger kids alone. She ordered that the 3-year-old remain in her stroller. She told them to call her on their cell phone if they needed her.

And then she drove home for some rest.

About an hour later, she was summoned back to the mall by the police, who charged her with endangering the welfare of her children.

“Be quiet,” she was told, as she scrambled to explain herself, and a policeman threatened, as Kevane describes it in the current issue of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers, “that if I ‘went crazy’ on him, he would handcuff me right in front of the children and take me away to jail for the night.”

The children were fine — “smiling, eating candy” — or were, at least, until the police decided to make an example of their mom.

The city attorney who took on Kevane’s case decided to do the same thing. She refused to hear of slapping Kevane on the wrist or accepting a guilty plea for anything less than “violating a duty of care,” a child endangerment charge punishable by jail time.

Now, we can debate until we’re blue in the face whether or not Kevane should have left those three young children alone with the 12-year-olds. The pre-teens in question, it seems pretty clear, didn’t have the maturity to be entrusted with the care of younger kids; despite what Kevane calls their solid “experience” babysitting, they ditched their charges in the purse section by the cosmetics counter in Macy’s while they went off to try on some shirts, setting off the whole sorry adventure with law enforcement.

That still doesn’t mean that Kevane’s error in judgment adds up to anything like child endangerment.

The issue I want to take up today, however, is not that of tricky choices, or over- or under-involved parenting, questions that have already been discussed with much gusto elsewhere. What really sent my head spinning after reading Kevane’s story was the degree to which it drove home the fact that our country’s resentment, and even hatred, of well-educated, apparently affluent women is spiraling out of control.

The prosecutor pursued her child endangerment case ultra-zealously because she “said she believed professors are incapable of seeing the real world around them because their ‘heads are always in a book,’” Kevane writes. “I just think that even individuals with major educations can commit this offense, and they should not be treated differently because they have more money or education,” the prosecutor wrote to Kevane’s lawyer.

Kevane reflects, “I now realize that her pressure — her near obsession with having me plead guilty — had less to do with what I had done and more to do with her perception of me as an outsider who thought she was above the law, who had money to pay her way out of a mistake, who thought she was smarter than the Bozeman attorney because of her ‘major education.’ This perception took hold even though I had never spoken one word to her directly. Nor did I ever speak in court; only my lawyer did. I was visible but silent, and thus unable to shake the image that the prosecutor had created of me: a rich, reckless, highly educated outsider mother who probably left her children all the time in order to read her books.”

This simmering resentment is common and pervasive in our culture right now. The idea that women with a “major education” think they’re better than everyone else, have a great sense of entitlement, feel they deserve special treatment, and are too out of touch with the lives of “normal” women to have a legitimate point of view, is a 21st-century version of the long-held belief that education makes women uppity and leads them to forget their rightful place. It’s precisely the kind of thinking that has fueled Sarah Palin’s unlikely — and continued — ability to pass herself off as the consummately “real” American woman. (And it is what has made it possible for her supporters to discredit other women’s criticism of her as elitist cat fighting.)

The idea that these women really should “be quiet” comes through loud and clear every time. Men, you may or may not have noticed, are virtually never accused of “whining” when they talk or speak out about their lives. When well-educated, affluent men write about other well-educated, affluent men — and isn’t that what most political reporting and commentary is? — they are never said to be limited by the “narrowness” of their scope and experience. Well-educated fathers are not perceived as less real, authentic or decent than less-educated fathers. Even professor-dads, as far as I can tell, don’t have to labor to prove that they’re human.

The idea that women with “major educations” are somehow suspect, the desire to smack them down and tell them “to be quiet” is hardly new. At the end of the 19th century, as increasing numbers of women began for the first time to pursue higher education, a campaign began, waged by prominent doctors, among others, against these new unnatural monsters, whose vital energies were being diverted from their wombs to their brains. In the last quarter of the 20th century, feminists were routinely delegitimized as brainy elitists ignorant of and unconcerned with the plight of ordinary women.

It made no difference how much work groups like the National Organization for Women did on behalf of battered or economically powerless women. It made no difference how much advocacy was done for legislation promoting pay equity (a particularly acute problem for women at the lower end of the economic spectrum) or for affordable child care. The media — then as now — was interested only in more educated, more affluent women, and so it was these women who came to define the women’s movement in the popular imagination. And it was these women, too, who came to be identified with social change, and who came to be despised when that change proved frightening and difficult.

This is why Palin — in her down-home aw-shucks posturing — is the 21st-century face of the backlash against women’s progress. This is why Kevane could be threatened and humiliated in front of her kids, menaced with jail time and ultimately railroaded into cutting a deal with the prosecution, once she realized she’d never be popular enough with local jurors to have a shot at making a successful not-guilty plea in court. (Paradox of paradoxes, as part of her deferred prosecution agreement, she was sentenced to even more education: in the form of a parenting class.)

The hatred of women — in all its archaic, phantasmagoric forms — is still alive and well in our society, and when directed at well-educated women, it’s socially acceptable, too. Think of this for a second the next time you’re inexplicably moved to put an “elite” woman in her place.

Enlace: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/dont-hate-her-because-shes-educated/?em

Simone de Beauvoir y el acto de amamantar

Hay mujeres para quienes las alegrías del embarazo y la lactancias son tan intensas, que quieren repetirlas indefinidamente; tan pronto como destetan al bebé, se sienten frustradas […] [La mujer] [y]a no es un objeto sometido a un sujeto; tampoco es un sujeto angustiado por la libertad, sino esa realidad equívoca que se llama vida. Por fin, su cuerpo es de ella, puesto que es del hijo que le pertenece. La sociedad le reconoce su posesión y la reviste, además, de un carácter sagrado. El seno, que antes era un objeto erótico puede exhibirlo ahora, porque es fuente de vida, hasta el punto de que hay cuadros piadosos que nos muestran a la Virgen Madre descubriéndose el pecho para suplicar a su Hijo que salve a la Humanidad. Enajenada en su cuerpo y en su dignidad social, la madre tiene la sosegadora ilusión de sentirse un ser en sí misma, un valor perfectamente logrado.




Texto:
El Segundo Sexo, Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

Obra:

La Virgen de la Leche
L. Asenjo (1864)
Museo de Porta Coeli, San Germán

jueves, 9 de julio de 2009

La ideología detrás de las decisiones II

Como parte de mi investigación sobre un tema feminista, he tenido la gran oportunidad de reflexionar sobre el feminismo, desde una perspectiva teórica pero siempre teniendo en mira una agenda política. Gracias a Myrta, he tenido la oportunidad de repasar con detenimiento el ensayo “Ideology and Women Choices” (1990) de Kathryn Abrams. Leyendo los comentarios que les puse abajo, no he podido evitar la referencia a Abrams.

Uno de los comentarios de una mujer fue el siguiente:

There are hundreds (thousands?) of women who would love to be in the position to stay home (although we are no longer allowed to admit it, lest the pro-work feminists attack us). Feminism, for me, is all about being able to choose. You chose a great career, but now you’re choosing motherhood. And it’s not like all of the work experience you’ve gained since you were 16 will magically disappear.


Dicha posición me anima a reflexionar sobre el feminismo y el derecho de las mujeres a decidir.

Kathryn Abrams en “Ideology…” discute los trabajos de Catharine MacKinnon y de Joan Williams. Ambas radicales apuntaban a que el discurso detrás de los derechos de las mujeres a decidir sobre cuestiones tales como renunciar a sus trabajos para criar a sus hijos (Williams) o acceder a tener relaciones sexuales heterosexuales (MacKinnon) no eran expresiones de autonomía de la mujer sino todo lo contrario, expresiones de opresión. MacKinnon llevó su reclamo a su análisis sobre el derecho a abortar en Privacy and Equality: Beyond Roe v Wade (las mujeres decidimos abortar, en beneficio del hombre).

Habla Abrams sobre el “ideology determination” como “el reclamo de que las decisiones de las mujeres están moldeadas primariamente o exclusivamente con la ideología del género” y aboga , en cierta manera, para que las feministas radicales bajen el tono de su discurso para no alienar a las mujeres que podrían sentir, (y con razón, añado yo) que MacKinnon y Williams subestiman su intelecto, necesidades y, cómo no, sus decisiones. Aún así, Abrams reconoce que el discurso de las radicales tenía una agenda política que exigía de cada una de las mujeres replantearse sus decisiones y rebelarse ante las circunstancias que las obligaban a actuar de una manera en específico, aún cuando ellas no se dieran cuenta (por la “falsa conciencia”).

Con los logros indiscutibles que hemos alcanzado las mujeres en los Estados Unidos y Puerto Rico nos fuimos alejando del feminismo radical. Por distintas razones, supongo. De repente, el feminismo en ambos países pareciera haberse convertido en una cuestión de “autonomía” manifestada a través del “derecho a decidir”. Eso, ciertamente, nos ha permitido reclamar ciertos espacios , sobre todo, en la esfera pública. Pero ha limitado nuestro campo de acción, en parte, porque un “derecho” es algo muy concreto, con principio y final, que no necesariamente hace una incisión en el problema social, podría hacerlo, claro está, pero no necesariamente ataja el problema. En otras palabras, se puede convertir en un parcho. El “derecho” valida el espacio a lo legitimado por el Estado o por alguna otra institución. Así, las mujeres tenemos derecho a parir y a abortar, derecho a quedarnos en casa y derecho a trabajar afuera, derecho a lactar y derecho a alimentar con fórmula… pero ¿qué consecuencias, si algunas, traen esos derechos? ¿qué ideología lleva a una mujer decidir x o y? ¿vamos de camino a nuestra emancipación física y emocional, o estamos retrocediendo? El feminismo liberal, tan enfocado en conseguir la supuesta “igualdad” y proveer las herramientas para que la mujer logre sus metas DENTRO del sistema capitalista, se ha apoderado también del discurso feminista, como si fuera el único discurso, la única alternativa. Las corrientes posmodernas también nos han restado proyectos políticos en cuanto y en tanto desde el cuestionamiento mismo de lo que es “mujer”, han logrado, entre otras cosas, despojar al feminismo de bastante terreno político en cuestiones como la pornografía y la prostitución Y esto lo digo yo, que me coloco como hija que apenas tenía 9 años cuando vio el muro de Berlín caer, y que maduró con una Unión Soviética destruida. Así, hablo desde la posición de una feminista que resiente los absolutismos, que tiene una desconfianza innata a las instituciones, que no se suscribe a postulados supuestamente empíricos. Pero, al mismo tiempo, habla una feminista que lee todos los días sobre cómo a sus hermanas las matan, las violan, las hieren, las insultan por ser MUJERES. Y mientras eso suceda , no podemos dejarnos arrastrar por el mero descontruccionismo, o concentrar todos nuestros esfuerzos en garantizar derechos. Esto no significa que dejemos de reconocer las grandes aportaciones. Independientemente de los planteamientos de MacKinnon atesoro mis derechos reproductivos, incluyendo el derecho a abortar, y atesoro, también, la visibilidad que el posmodernismo nos ha dado a tantas y tantas mujeres doble y hasta triplemente oprimidas- pienso en bell hooks, por mencionar alguna de las teóricas posmodernas.

No obstante, los derechos tienen que tener sustancia. Por ejemplo, tenemos que preguntarnos a cuáles mujeres estamos protegiendo cuando hablamos del derecho a que una se quede en su hogar para criar a sus hijos. En esta época, ¿qué mujer puede hacer esto, si no tiene una pareja que la mantenga? Igual sucede con las leyes a favor de la lactancia. Nos hemos preguntado, ¿quiénes son las mujeres que interesan lactar? ¿De qué transfondo socioeconómico provienen? ¿Estamos conscientes que el WIC, por ejemplo, ha encontrado en sus campañas pro lactancia una manera de rebajar su presupuesto, en detrimento de las mujeres pobres que no pueden o no quieren lactar?

Pienso que hay que volver a hablar de los feminismos y discutir seriamente (aunque conlleve fricciones y desacuerdos) qué feminismo es el que mejor adelanta la emancipación de las mujeres. Yo misma tengo dudas.

Sigo pensando…

Sobre la ideología detrás de la decisión

En la entrada anterior, les invité a leer la carta de una joven madre estadounidense llamada Anna. Anna, madre hace apenas unos meses, busca consejo sobre cómo lidiar con la toma de una importante decisión: convertirse en una "stay at home mom" para criar a su hija. Es una carta franca. Pero tanto o más interesante que la carta son los comentarios y reacciones de las lectoras (y alguno que otro lector).

Como son muchos, he hecho una selección de algunos de ellos para poder discutir lo que algunas feministas han llamado "ideology of choice". Es increíble, pero hemos estado hablando de lo mismo por ya casi 40 años y todavía estamos paradas sobre la discusión. Si acaso, hemos retrocedido porque sin haber alcanzado el derrumbe de la doble jornada ya las madres jóvenes están recogiendo velas. Veamos algunos de los comentarios.

There are hundreds (thousands?) of women who would love to be in the position to stay home (although we are no longer allowed to admit it, lest the pro-work feminists attack us). Feminism, for me, is all about being able to choose. You chose a great career, but now you’re choosing motherhood. And it’s not like all of the work experience you’ve gained since you were 16 will magically disappear. Depending on your career, stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the field (software, research, whatever). Only you can decide what’s right for you. Don’t listen to those who tell you you are wasting your time/talents, nor those who would tell you that simply considering staying at work is the most selfish thing you can do. Your heart already knows what it wants to do. You just need the reassurance that it is ok. It’s ok. It’s ok to work. It’s ok to stay home. Do what’s best for you and your family. As someone who has gone back to work, I’ll say this, it never gets any easier, and that longing never goes away

As parents, we need to stop being ‘ashamed’ of the desire to be an active part of a relationship that is a natural and vital part of humanity.
This letter literally had me in tears, as I, too, spent my entire life dedicated to my career (I am an attorney), only to have my priorities shift when my daughter was born nearly 3 months ago. I would love to stay at home with Bitlet full-time, but that is not possible. I commend Anna for reevaluating her priorities, and for her honest evaluation of those early days, and wish her nothing but the best of luck.


I am a professional and have two young children and went back to work 8 weeks after having each of them. They are extremely precious to me. I do all that I can for them and spend as much time as I can with them. I love my career and I spent many years in school and worked hard to get where I am. When I think about what adjectives define who I am, a mother is only one of the many adjectives that I would chose to describe myself. Even before I had children I did not want to be defined by them. I wanted them to be part of what defines me and my career is another part of what defines me. I would not take that away just like I would not take away the definition of being a mother. Everyone needs to make their own choices. There is no wrong or right but what make us happy and gives us pride.

I must say that when I started reading this article, I started getting mad. I thought it was going to be the usual, tired song and dance about how “I’m a woman, raising a kid is a pain in the ass, and my real job is working in an office.”
Then I continued to read further and was amazed that you ended up going in the other direction. I have always been skeptical that women who were hard-core about their jobs and positions could ever be turned from then for the most important job ever: child care. This has made me think otherwise.
If only more mothers, even those who are stay-at-home, would think like this, families would be far better off, in my opinion.


I take comfort in knowing I’m not alone in this and that many women struggle daily with this decision. I also know that I have the power to change my situation if I want to and that no one situation is truely perfect. I think we’ll always feel like we’re leaving a little something behind, whether it’s the career we downsized in order to stay home, or the loss time with baby that we sacrifice in order to work.


if you have just taken three months PAID maternity leave and you quit now are you making it harder for all the working moms who come after you at the company. Every mom who doesn’t come back or quits shortly after returning from paid leave seems to be brought up a regular basis at my company when another woman is pregnant and going on leave.

Don’t sell yourself short. You are the best person to care for your child. I am a stay at home mom and I see wonderful nannies all day long and I see terrible ones. But even the children who have the wonderful nannies still want their mommies instead.

Decide what is right for you - not for society or anyone else and don’t feel guilty about your decision. Enjoy your time because your child is gonig to grow up before you realize it.

As a childfree woman, I can’t help but wonder if your employers will be hesitant to hire a woman to replace you for fear of her doing the same thing you’ve done.

I am SO glad, now that we’ve all settled in, that I kept working. I am contributing needed income for my family, accruing SS and disability benefits, making sure my professional skills stay sharp, partaking in our larger society outside of my role as a mom, and I get to go the bathroom all my myself, ha ha. AND I get to be a mother to a wonderful toddler who is very happy to see her teachers each weekday morning but also runs to hug me each evening.

My simplistic, male, point of view:
Can you image, 30 years from now (maybe while watching you daughter walk down the aisle at her wedding), wishing that you had spent more time at work, rather than with her?


It would be nice if this blog could write about moms who have no choice but to work, who don’t bother agonizing over the question of whether to return to work or not but rather, need to focus their attention on being both good workers and good mothers because they have to be both no matter what- maybe a discussion/suggestions about ways in which moms like that/us make that juggle work. I feel for Anna, but I’m tired of this same old middle class opt out discussion.

Scaling Back Career for Baby

Amigas y amigos, la clave sigue estando en la maternidad. Si queremos echar hacia adelante las metas feministas tenemos que volver a darle duro a los mitos, culpas y bondades de la maternidad. Lean la carta de esta joven madre Y LOS COMENTARIOS de las lectoras (NO se pierdan los comentarios), muchas de ellas madres trabajadoras también.

Aquí se los dejo y luego regreso con mis reacciones.

Abrazos,

Scaling Back Career for Baby

miércoles, 8 de julio de 2009

JUSTICE GINSBURG: "Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore."

Genial y franca entrevista a la Jueza del Tribunal Supremo de E.U. Ruth B. Ginsburg. Resalto algunas contestaciones.

July 12, 2009

The Place of Women on the Court
By EMILY BAZELON

In late February, three weeks after she had an operation for a recurrence of cancer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to Barack Obama’s first address to Congress. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t an event anyone expected her to attend. She went, she said, because she wanted the country to see that there was a woman on the Supreme Court.

Now another woman, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is about to begin the confirmation hearings that stand between her and a seat near Ginsburg on the high bench. After 16 years on the court — the last three, since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, as the only woman working alongside eight men — Ginsburg has a unique perspective on what’s at stake in Sotomayor’s nomination. I sat down with the 76-year-old justice last week to talk about women on the bench and their effect on the dynamics and decisions of the court.

I first met Justice Ginsburg a year ago, when she invited me to her chambers and to a tea for international fellows from Georgetown law school, at which she was speaking. It struck me then, as we walked through the courthouse, that each marker she pointed out involved women’s history — from a photograph and a political cartoon in the hallway outside her chambers of Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar, to the renaming of a dining room at the court in honor of Natalie Cornell Rehnquist, wife of the late chief justice. (The tribute was O’Connor’s idea. “My former chief was a traditionalist, but he could hardly object,” Ginsburg said with a bit of glee.)

This time, we talked for 90 minutes in the personal office of Ginsburg’s temporary chambers (she is soon moving to the chambers that Justice David Souter is vacating). Ginsburg, who was wearing an elegant cream-colored suit, matching pumps and turquoise earrings, spoke softly, and at times her manner was mild, but she was forceful about why she thinks Sotomayor should be confirmed and about a few of the court’s recent cases. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our interview.

At the end of our time together, Ginsburg rose and said energetically that she would soon be off to her twice-weekly 7 p.m. personal-training session. She works out at the court on an elliptical machine, and she lifts weights. “To keep me in shape,” she said.

Q: At your confirmation hearings in 1993, you talked­ about how you hoped to see three or four women on the court. How do you feel about how long it has taken to see simply one more woman nominated?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: My prediction was right for the Supreme Court of Canada. They have Beverley McLachlin as the chief justice, and they have at least three other women. The attrition rate is slow on this court.

Q: Now that Judge Sotomayor has been nominated, how do you feel about that?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I feel great that I don’t have to be the lone woman around this place.

Q: What has that been like?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: It’s almost like being back in law school in 1956, when there were 9 of us in a class of over 500, so that meant most sections had just 2 women, and you felt that every eye was on you. Every time you went to answer a question, you were answering for your entire sex. It may not have been true, but certainly you felt that way. You were different and the object of curiosity.

Q: Did you feel that this time around from your male colleagues?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: My basic concern about being all alone was the public got the wrong perception of the court. It just doesn’t look right in the year 2009.

Q: Why on a deeper level does it matter? It’s not just the symbolism, right?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: It matters for women to be there at the conference table to be doing everything that the court does. I hope that these hearings for Sonia will be as civil as mine were and Steve Breyer’s were. Ours were unusual in that respect.

Q: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being “bullying” or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I can’t say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They’ll seize on any handle. One is that she’s a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”] And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you’ve said something that you didn’t get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I’m sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All of our differences make the conference better. That I’m a woman, that’s part of it, that I’m Jewish, that’s part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me.

Once Justice O’Connor was questioning counsel at oral argument. I thought she was done, so I asked a question, and Sandra said: Just a minute, I’m not finished. So I apologized to her and she said, It’s O.K., Ruth. The guys do it to each other all the time, they step on each other’s questions. And then there appeared an item in USA Today, and the headline was something like“Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra.”

Q: It seemed to me that male judges do much more abrasive things all the time, and it goes unremarked.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the notion that Sonia is an aggressive questioner — what else is new? Has anybody watched Scalia or Breyer up on the bench?

Q: She’ll fit right in?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: She’ll hold her own.

Q: From your point of view, does having another woman on the court matter primarily in terms of the public’s perception, or also for what it feels like to be in conference and on the bench?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: All of those things. What was particularly good was that Sandra and I were different — not cast in the same mold. Sandra gets out two words to my every one. I think that Sonia and I will also be quite different in our style. I think she may be the first justice who didn’t have English as her native language. And she has done just about everything that you can do in law as a prosecutor, in a private firm and on the District Court and the Court of Appeals.

Q: Do you know her well or a little bit?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I know her because I’m the Second Circuit Justice. So I go once a year to the Judicial Conference.

Q: What do you think about Judge Sotomayor’s frank remarks that she is a product of affirmative action?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So am I. I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972, every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program. Every university had a contract, and Stan Pottinger would go around and ask, How are you doing on your affirmative-action plan? William McGill, who was then the president of Columbia, was asked by a reporter: How is Columbia doing with its affirmative action? He said, It’s no mistake that the two most recent appointments to the law school are a woman and an African-American man.


Q: And was that you?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I was the woman. I never would have gotten that invitation from Columbia without the push from the Nixon administration. I understand that there is a thought that people will point to the affirmative-action baby and say she couldn’t have made it if she were judged solely on the merits. But when I got to Columbia I was well regarded by my colleagues even though they certainly disagreed with many of the positions that I was taking. They backed me up: If that’s what I thought, I should be able to speak my mind.

Q: Is that another example of how you’ve worked with men over the years?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world. If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

Q: You sent me an article by Michael Klarman, a Harvard law professor, that was about ways in which you and Thurgood Marshall were effective as litigators. Klarman pointed out that you were very good at influencing a male lawyer’s brief without making him feel that you had taken over the case. Is that something you learned to do? Was it a conscious approach?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it was a conscious approach. If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, You don’t know how to use the English language, or how could you make that argument? It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

Q: Do you think women have to learn how to do that in a different way from men sometimes in the workplace?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I haven’t noticed it. There are some very sympathetic men.

Q: Is it an approach that you still use with your colleagues to try and have a gentle touch?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, or to have a sense of humor.

Q: Do you think if there were more women on the court with you that other dynamics would change?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think back to the days when — I don’t know who it was — when I think Truman suggested the possibility of a woman as a justice. Someone said we have these conferences and men are talking to men and sometimes we loosen our ties, sometimes even take off our shoes. The notion was that they would be inhibited from doing that if women were around. I don’t know how many times I’ve kicked off my shoes. Including the time some reporter said something like, it took me a long time to get up from the bench. They worried, was I frail? To be truthful I had kicked off my shoes, and I couldn’t find my right shoe; it traveled way underneath.

Q: You are said to have very warm relationships with your colleagues. And so I was surprised to read a comment you made in an interview in May with Joan Biskupic of USA Today. You said that when you were a young lawyer, your voice was often ignored, and then a male colleague would repeat a point you’d made, and other people would be alert to it. And then you said this still happens now at conference.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Not often. It was a routine thing [in the past] that I would say something and it would just pass, and then somebody else would say almost the same thing and people noticed. I think the idea in the 1950s and ’60s was that if it was a woman’s voice, you could tune out, because she wasn’t going to say anything significant. There’s much less of that.But it still exists, and it’s not a special experience that I’ve had. I’ve talked to other women in high places, and they've had the same experience.

Q: I wonder if that would change if there were more women who were part of the mix on the court?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it undoubtedly would. You can imagine in Canada, where McLachlin is the chief, I think they must have a different way of hearing a woman’s voice if she is the leader.

Q: I wanted to ask you about the academic research on the effect of sex on judging. Studies have found a difference in the way male and female judges of similar ideologies vote in some cases. And that the presence of a woman on a panel can influence the way her male colleagues vote. How do these findings match your experience?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m very doubtful about those kinds of [results]. I certainly know that there are women in federal courts with whom I disagree just as strongly as I disagree with any man. I guess I have some resistance to that kind of survey because it’s what I was arguing against in the ’70s. Like in Mozart’s opera “Così Fan Tutte”: that’s the way women are.

Q: We started by talking about the idea of three or four women on the Supreme Court. Could you imagine a Supreme Court that had five or six or seven women on it?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, we’ve had some state Supreme Courts that have had a majority of women.

Q: Do you have a sense of what that would be like to actually work on and how it would be different?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The work would not be any easier. Some of the amenities might improve.

Q: Do you think that some of the discrimination cases might turn out differently?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think for the most part, yes. I would suspect that, because the women will relate to their own experiences.

Q: That’s one area in which outcomes might actually differ?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. I think the presence of women on the bench made it possible for the courts to appreciate earlier than they might otherwise that sexual harassment belongs under Title VII [as a violation of civil rights law].

Q: Can I bring up the Ricci case, brought by the New Haven firefighters?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: This case had some very hard elements. It was a bit like the Heller case, which involved the Second Amendment. [Last year, the Supreme Court found that Washington gun-control laws that barred handguns in private homes were unconstitutional.] For that, the plaintiff was a nice guy who was a security guard at the Federal Judicial Center, and he had to carry a gun on his job, but he couldn’t carry it home. And in Ricci, you have a dyslexic firefighter. Which is just exactly what you should do as a lawyer. I mean, that’s what I did.

Q: It’s true, it’s a very good strategy. He was a very sympathetic plaintiff. And it was important that the city had already given the test that the white firefighters scored high on and the black firefighters did not.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. And the city weights the written and oral parts of the test 60-40, and says: That’s what the union wanted, it’s been in the bargaining contracts for 20 years.

I don’t know how many cases there were, Title VII civil rights cases, where unions were responsible. The very first week that I was at Columbia, Jan Goodman, a lawyer in New York, called me and said, Do you know that Columbia has given layoff notices to 25 maids and not a single janitor? Columbia’s defense was the union contract, which was set up so that every maid would have to go before the newly hired janitor would get a layoff notice.

Q: What about the case this term involving the strip search, in school, of 13-year-old Savana Redding? Justice Souter’s majority opinion, finding that the strip search was unconstitutional, is very different from what I expected after oral argument, when some of the men on the court didn’t seem to see the seriousness here. Is that an example of a case when having a woman as part of the conversation was important?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it makes people stop and think, Maybe a 13-year-old girl is different from a 13-year-old boy in terms of how humiliating it is to be seen undressed. I think many of [the male justices] first thought of their own reaction. It came out in various questions. You change your clothes in the gym, what’s the big deal?

Q: Seeing that Souter wrote the opinion in Savana Redding’s case reminded me of Justice Rehnquist writing the majority opinion in Nevada v. Hibbs, the 2003 case in which the court ruled 6-3 that the Family Medical Leave Act applies to state employers, for both female and male workers. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in his opinion about an idea you have been talking about for a long time, about stereotypes. He discussed how when women are stereotyped as responsible for the domestic sphere, and men are not, that makes women seem less valuable as employees. I wonder if one of the measures of your success on the court is that a male justice would write an opinion like this?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: That opinion was such a delightful surprise. When my husband read it, he asked, did I write that opinion? I was very fond of my old chief. I have a sense that it was in part his life experience. When his daughter Janet was divorced, I think the chief felt some kind of responsibility to be kind of a father figure to those girls. So he became more sensitive to things that he might not have noticed.

Q: Right. Chief Justice Rehnquist once said that sex-discrimination claims carry little weight. And he quipped at the end of a case you argued, when you were a lawyer, “You won’t settle for putting Susan B. Anthony on the new dollar, then?” Do you think he was affected by working with you and Justice O’Connor?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I wouldn’t attribute it to one thing. I think I would attribute it to his court experience and his life experience. One of the most moving statements at a memorial service I ever heard was when Janet Rehnquist’s daughter read a letter that she had written to her grandfather. The closeness of their relationship and the caring was just beautiful. Most people had no idea that there was that side to Rehnquist.

Q: You have written, “To turn in a new direction, the court first had to gain an understanding that legislation apparently designed to benefit or protect women could have the opposite effect.” The pedestal versus the cage. Has the court made that turn completely, or is there still more work to be done?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Not completely, as you can see in the case involving whether a child acquires citizenship from an unwed father. [Nguyen v. INS, in which the court in 2001 upheld, by 5 to 4, a law that set different requirements for a child to become a citizen, depending on whether his citizenship rights came from his unmarried mother or his unmarried father.] The majority thought there was something about the link between a mother and a child that doesn’t exist between the father and a child. But in fact the child in the case had been brought up by his father.

They were held back by a way of looking at the world in which a man who wasn’t married simply was not responsible. There must have been so many repetitions of Madame Butterfly in World War II. And for Justice Stevens [who voted with the majority], that was part of his experience. I think that’s going to be over in the next generation, these kinds of rulings.

Q: Let me ask you about the fight you waged for the courts to understand that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I wrote about it a number of times. I litigated Captain Struck’s case about reproductive choice. [In 1972, Ginsburg represented Capt. Susan Struck, who became pregnant during her service in the Air Force. At the time, the Air Force automatically discharged any woman who became pregnant and told Captain Struck that she should have an abortion if she wanted to keep her job. The government changed the regulation before the Supreme Court could decide the case.] If the court could have seen Susan Struck’s case — this was the U.S. government, a U.S. Air Force post, offering abortions, in 1971, two years before Roe.

Q: And suggesting an abortion as the solution to Struck’s problem.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. Not only that, but it was available to her on the base.

Q: The case ties together themes of women’s equality and reproductive freedom. The court split those themes apart in Roe v. Wade. Do you see, as part of a future feminist legal wish list, repositioning Roe so that the right to abortion is rooted in the constitutional promise of sex equality?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Oh, yes. I think it will be.

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.

Q: Does that mean getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion — like a waiting period — that are not deemed an “undue burden” to a woman’s reproductive freedom?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m not a big fan of these tests. I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman’s decision. It’s entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn’t mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours.

I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they’re fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change.

Q: Since we are talking about abortion, I want to ask you about Gonzales v. Carhart, the case in which the court upheld a law banning so-called partial-birth abortion. Justice Kennedy in his opinion for the majority characterized women as regretting the choice to have an abortion, and then talked about how they need to be shielded from knowing the specifics of what they’d done. You wrote, “This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution.” I wondered if this was an example of the court not quite making the turn to seeing women as fully autonomous.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The poor little woman, to regret the choice that she made. Unfortunately there is something of that in Roe. It’s not about the women alone. It’s the women in consultation with her doctor. So the view you get is the tall doctor and the little woman who needs him.

Q: In the 1980s, you wrote about how while the sphere for women has widened to include more work, men haven’t taken on as much domestic responsibility. Do you think that things are beginning to change?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: That’s going to take time, changing that kind of culture. But looking at my own family, my daughter Jane teaches at Columbia, she travels all over the world, and she has the most outstanding supportive husband who certainly carries his fair share of the load. Although their division of labor is different than mine and my husband’s, because my daughter is a super cook.

Q: Can courts play a role in changing that culture?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The Legislature can make the change, can facilitate the change, as laws like the Family Medical Leave Act do. But it’s not something a court can decree. A court can’t tell the man, You’ve got to do more than carry out the garbage.

miércoles, 1 de julio de 2009

Declaración de apoyo al movimiento de mujeres de Honduras

Declaración de apoyo al movimiento de mujeres de Honduras

El Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres de Puerto Rico (MAMPR) es un grupo de feministas en su carácter individual, organizaciones sin fines de lucro, y otras entidades afines que tiene como misión primordial trabajar, desde una perspectiva de género, por el bienestar de las mujeres de nuestro país.

Los recientes incidentes provocados en Honduras por las fuerzas armadas nos obligan a expresarnos como parte de la comunidad latinoamericana, caribeña e internacional pero sobre todo porque como mujeres creemos en la equidad, la participación democrática y el derecho de cada persona a vivir en libertad, en paz y perseguir su más alto bienestar.

Por eso, denunciamos:

♀ Que las fuerzas armadas hondureñas, en abierta violación a su estado de derecho y tratados internacionales, utilizaron su poder para anular por la fuerza el gobierno constitucional de ese país e invalidar los procesos de participación ciudadana que se concretarían en la consulta popular que se realizaría el 28 de junio para modificar o no la Constitución de Honduras.

♀ Que ante la resistencia ciudadana, suspendieron las garantías constitucionales del pueblo hondureño poniendo en riesgo la protección y garantías de los derechos humanos del mismo.

♀ Que el Congreso hondureño se hizo cómplice de los militares colaborando con la sustitución del presidente Manuel Zelaya y dando la espalda al pueblo y a la democracia.

♀ Que las organizaciones de mujeres de Honduras, como parte del movimiento de pueblo que denunció el golpe de estado, están amenazadas y asediadas por las fuerzas militares.

Como movimiento de mujeres puertorriqueñas, caribeñas y latinoamericanas, declaramos:

♀ Que el trabajo por los derechos de las mujeres es profundamente político y que eso convierte a nuestras compañeras hondureñas en el blanco potencial de las acciones represivas del régimen de violencia que se acaba de instaurar en Honduras.
♀ Que este atentado militar afianza la existencia de estructuras y relaciones sociales patriarcales, opresoras y de explotación que deben ser desafiadas como conjunto.

♀ Que es imprescindible una aplicación transversal de una perspectiva de género para garantizar los derechos humanos de las mujeres hondureñas en este momento de crisis e inestabilidad
Como mujeres defensoras de la equidad y de la integridad humana exigimos:

♀ Que la comunidad internacional repudie el golpe militar y colabore en el restablecimiento del orden constitucional de Honduras.

♀ Que se garantice la seguridad y la integridad física y emocional de los grupos de mujeres y las comunidades que viven en extrema pobreza y que son los sectores más vulnerables a los estallidos de violencia que se desencadenan cuando se atenta contra la participación democrática.

♀ Que se garantice el pleno ejercicio de los derechos humanos de las mujeres hondureñas, incluyendo los económicos, sociales y culturales, y la libertad para alcanzar el bienestar y una vida digna.

♀ Que a la luz de las recomendaciones internacionales destinadas a garantizar la equidad de géneros y económica, se abran espacios reales de participación política para las mujeres y los sectores populares que tienen el derecho a ser oídos y considerados a la hora de tomar las decisiones del país.

El Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres de Puerto Rico reconoce que la equidad, la justicia y la libertad, como valores humanos supremos, son precisamente los más vulnerables porque retan los sistemas tradicionales de opresión. Admiramos y nos solidarizamos con las compañeras hondureñas y con cada persona de ese país que se ha puesto de pie y ha reclamado el respeto hacia la democracia y los derechos humanos del pueblo hondureño.

En Puerto Rico
30 de junio de 2009

Duelo

01-Julio-2009 | SOFÍA IRENE CARDONA
BUSCAPIÉ
Duelo

Apesar de que las mujeres tienen prohibido cantar públicamente en Irán, Neda Agha-Soltan se las había agenciado para, además de estudiar filosofía islámica, tomar lecciones clandestinas de canto. Con su profesor de música andaba, por las convulsas calles de Teherán, cuando recibió el balazo que la silenció para siempre. Apoyar el restablecimiento de la democracia en su país, fue su último acto de desafío.

Dice la prensa, conmovida por la carga poética de las circunstancias, que su nombre persa, Neda, significa, oportunamente: voz, llamado, mensaje divino. Su llegada al mundo debió haber sido, para sus padres, una gran alegría.

Seguramente, hubieran preferido mantener a su hija discretamente viva, pero el balazo que recibió en el pecho la convirtió en emblema de la lucha por la justicia en su país; Neda, “la voz de Irán”. “¡Me quemo! ¡Me quemo!”, decía Neda, mientras agonizaba tirada en la calle. Podría pensarse que la vida se debatía por contenerse en aquel cuerpo joven. Esta misma fuerza incendió la conciencia de más de un espectador del vídeo clandestino, que recoge sus últimos instantes y recorrió el mundo a pesar de la censura.

En una candorosa confesión grabada en Internet, un cibernauta norteamericano confiesa que, a pesar de haber visto antes varias crudas imágenes del conflicto, no le importó lo que sucedía en Irán, hasta que vio morir a Neda.

“No tenía nada que ver conmigo”, dice, en tono avergonzado, “era una batalla más, un fulano enfrentado a otro fulano por el poder”. Sin embargo, la imagen de la inofensiva joven, desangrándose ante la desesperación de su maestro, resulta una contundente muestra de la barbarie. Ésa que se encuentra en todas partes, con diferentes nombres y rostros, atentando contra la inteligencia y la esperanza. En cualquier lugar y en cualquier momento, puede alcanzarnos su zarpazo.

Aunque lejana, la muerte de Neda, entonces, no es ajena. En ese mismo fuego en que moría, suelen arder la obstinación y el desafío de los buenos jóvenes de estos tiempos, en todas partes. Por eso penamos por ellos amargamente cuando quedan inmóviles, para siempre detenidos, bajo cualquier cielo.

La autora es profesora universitaria y escritora.