NEWSBYPEMA LEVY

The Tennessean reports that the Nashville police force allows officers with domestic violence charges to keep their jobs.

The paper reports: "At least 10 Metro Police officers have been arrested on domestic violence charges in the last five years. Eight of those were allowed to keep their jobs after their arrests, and the remaining two cases are pending." The maximum punishment was an eight-day suspension.

If their convictions actually went through, then they would be kicked off the force, Nashville Police promised. This is probably true, because it's hard to get around: federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor to possess a firearm. But it's difficult to obtain a conviction in domestic violence cases, and all of these men got off. That doesn't make inaction by the police force acceptable: once under arrest for domestic abuse and with charges pending, an officer should not be able to continue to work and carry his gun.

Since domestic violence calls are common, it's worth wondering how a policeman who has been violent with this own family will respond to such a situation. It's especially troubling coming just months after a report that the Nashville police don't seem to take domestic abuse very seriously. As I wrote then, "In 2005, [Nashville] police cleared 211 cases without making an arrest. One year later, the number jumped to 3,866, and by 2009, it was 5,600." Clearly, there's something serious going on that is causing the department to prematurely close and dismiss thousands of cases -- sometimes with fatal results.

In an example of political reporting at its best, local St. Louis paper the Riverfront Times recently led its news section with some heavy-hitting reporting: "Sarah Steelman: Hot or Not?"

In all seriousness, a story called "How Hot is Sarah Steelman anyway?" -- a piece judging the attractiveness of potential 2012 Missouri Senate candidate Sarah Steelman -- is a good example of the unequal treatment of political women in the newsroom and our political discourse at large. Inspired by a radio host who called her "hot" but not intelligent, the Riverfront Times ran with the story: "Just how hot is Sarah Steelman? Is she Sarah Palin hot? Nikki Haley hot? Or -- be still our hearts! -- Kirsten Gillibrand hot?"

Reporter Sarah Fenske actually justifies the fact that she's discussing a candidate's looks before launching a call for reader feedback on Steelman's hotness quotient: "​For the record, we don't believe women should be judged on the basis of their looks, or lack thereof...[but] Steelman's looks are clearly gonna be an issue." Okay, it's unfortunate that the political discourse immediately trends towards judging women's looks rather than, rather than discussing their policy positions. But -- tempting as it is to join in the hot-or-not-fun -- here are a few directions the author could have gone in instead:

There are two things our society tells women they need to be happy: beauty and a man.

In the extreme, this means women go under the knife, trying to make their bodies conform to our ridiculous beauty standards. A premium is placed on weddings and how the bride looks at the wedding. Feminists were horrified when these damaging obsessions became reality TV shows like The Swan and My Fair Wedding. Now, E! Entertainment has taken the next logical step and combined them into one massively-sexist show: Bridalplasty.

Brides-to-be compete in wedding-themed contests like writing vows, then the winner picks a desired surgery off her “wish list,” anything from a nose job to liposuction to breast implants. The husband-to-be does not get to see his surgically altered bride until she walks down the aisle. Each week a woman is voted off, so the audience gets to see women scheming and backstabbing, maybe even some cat-fights.

Here's a taste from Jezebel of the first episode: "The contestants had to race to finish a puzzle, by covering up their old 'gross' bodies with Photoshopped versions of themselves. The women who finished their puzzles in a timely fashion were allowed to attend an "injection party," where they would be able to get a bunch of fillers and Botox." The last woman to make it into the injection party wept for joy.

It’s no secret that sexual assault on campus is an epidemic, and that universities are doing little to protect women on their campuses. The suicide of Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg this fall highlights just how low a priority sexual assault really is.

Nineteen-year-old Lizzy Seeberg reported to the Notre Dame University police that she had been sexually assaulted by a Notre Dame football player on August 31. According to the Chicago Tribune, she began to fear that "people would dislike her for accusing a Notre Dame athlete of a sex crime and that she would wear the incident 'like a scarlet letter' throughout her college career." To maintain normalcy, she participated in a tailgate (reminds me of the cheerleader who had to cheer for her rapist). Nine days after the attack, Seeberg committed suicide by taking a lethal quantity of Effexor, an anti-depressant.

Three months after the incident, Notre Dame is not publicly acknowledging the case or what actions the university has taken. Not only are they unhelpful and lacking in remorse, but as the Tribune noted, they seem to have hindered the case by failing to report the sexual attack to the police department investigating Seeberg’s death and by neglecting to "refer the case to the county's special victims unit, which was established to handle sex offenses."

The case has been widely reported on in the last few weeks, with many takeaways. The Good Men Project noted the toxic influence of big college sports, a world without consequences where, as one commenter noted, "not only do big-time, big-money sports no longer seem to build character but they seem to actively undermine it, spectacularly so, across entire institutions."

Via the ACLU comes word that some Walgreen pharmacies in Texas refuse to sell Emergency Contraception to men. Despite a corporate policy that abides by the FDA’s federal guidelines, which state that anyone 17 years and over can purchase the Morning After Pill, when Adam Drake tried to buy the pill in a Walgreens in Houston, the pharmacist turned him down. He went to the manager, but she stuck by her pharmacist and turned Drake away. Let me count the ways this is such a disgusting phenomenon.

First, the ACLU focuses on gender discrimination. This country has a long legal history which prohibits gender discrimination just like this -- for men as well as women. This Walgreens violated Drake’s rights, not to mention federal rules. Beyond legal concerns, there’s the fact that the effectiveness of emergency contraception is time-sensitive. Being in  Houston, Drake was able to go to another pharmacy, but others -- particularly not in urban areas -- may not be so lucky.

So refusing to sell EC to men is dangerous and illegal, but it also embodies the sexism at the root of the anti-choice movement. When Drake complained to Walgreens, a representative told him that "the pharmacist has the right to refuse service, and that the store has an unwritten rule that they will not sell the product to men unless the woman is present because he may give it to an underage person." (Add this to the frustration over the FDA's decision to deny EC access to underage women against any scientific reason.) Sure, technically any person could be planning to get an over-the-counter medication for somebody else who's not supposed to have it.

In other words, Walgreens holds the moral high ground over all women who can’t keep their legs closed and if they don’t want to get pregnant, they should personally make the pilgrimage to Walgreens and pray that they aren’t refused service.

With one of the largest Muslim student populations in the country, last March George Washington University set aside one hour per week that the pool would only be open to women. The decision was an attempt to allow Muslim female students a chance to swim without breaking Islam’s rules about modesty. For one hour a week, a tarp hides the pool from onlookers and a female lifeguard is on duty. But recently, fears of “creeping Sharia” -- the idea that Muslim custom is slowly taking over American life -- has raised an online hell storm over the all-female swim-hour.

This is a situation where a school has decided to allow Muslim women, a demographic whose gender and religion means their participation in sports is relatively low, to be physically active and take advantage of the facilities that every other student is free to use, and which their tuition already pays for. One hour a week is not a big inconvenience to anyone, and for a small group of women, it means the ability to swim. "Although I wouldn't really mind, it would be satisfying to me religiously to swim only with girls," a Muslim student told the GW Hatchet, who had given up her swim regimen when she arrived at George Washington.

Of course, the irrational frenzy on the Internet can’t understand why normal Americans are being forced to change their lifestyle to accommodate someone else -- something our country has been doing for religious minorities for centuries. Under pressure, George Washington University is reconsidering the policy -- meaning a kind and sensible policy, despite campus support, could be derailed by the intolerance of people carrying the torch of anti-Muslim intolerance. Seriously, flip their logic around and you’re arguing that in accordance with "our ways," we should force women either to disregard their religion and expose their bodies to men, or not exercise. That sounds like an oppressive environment for Muslim women and no one else.

Tell GWU to continuing offering Muslim women the chance to swim.

Photo credit: Foxtongue

New research on the "motherhood penalty" confirms that when poorer women have children, their careers suffer more than their wealthy counterparts'.

While studies have previously confirmed that women's wages and careers suffer when they have children, a new study by sociologists Michelle J. Budig and Melissa J. Hodges looks at the motherhood penalty for women at different income levels and stages in their careers. The higher a woman climbs, the less likely she is to be a mother, forced to make a choice between career and family that men don't generally have to. Women who do make it to the top of their fields and manage to have children benefit greatly from family-friendly policies (as well as the resources to hire a nanny) and their careers do not suffer. But for the bottom 95% of women, the opposite is true.

From who's suffering from the recession to who's dropping out of schools, the answer is always those who have less.  As the report states, women who are less affected by the motherhood penalty earn more, are farther along in their careers, and work at organizations with women-friendly policies that prefer to cultivate talent over high turnover. That's rarely true at the other end of the spectrum, where women are fired for taking too much time if they suffer medical complications or because they can't afford expensive childcare. This not a random cruel joke society is playing on the poor: it's a direct result of state and federal laws that allow employers to punish women, especially young and poor women, for having children. As economist Nancy Folbre on the Economix blog concludes, "More universal family policies, such as early-childhood education, paid family leave, paid sick days and paid vacation time could help most working mothers substantially increase their earnings."

In 2003, EMILY’s List toasted Alex Sink as the only pro-choice member of Florida's cabinet. Unsurprisingly, she is also its only woman. Florida has never had a female governor; its one and only female U.S. senator survived one term. It's one of the many reasons the Florida gubernatorial elections this November are critical.

When Floridians go to the polls on November 2, they have two stark options for governor. There’s Alex Sink, a pro-choice Democrat and the state’s Chief Financial Officer, running on a record of competence and bipartisanship. The man she running against is a parasite at best, a criminal at worst.

Rick Scott, the Republican nominee for governor of Florida, has spent his professional career in the health care field. In 1998, he was ousted from his position as CEO of Columbia/HCA after the company pled guilty to 14 felony charges of defrauding the government of Medicare funds and paying a record $1.7 billion in fines (criminal). In his next business venture, Solantic clinics, is a chain of for-profit medical clinics in Florida. In both 1993 and recently, Scott has been a loud, organized, and well-funded opponent of health care reform -- mostly because he feeds off of high insurance costs, defrauding the government, and luring the uninsured to his clinics (parasite). Not even all Republicans can get on board with Scott’s sleaze, as demonstrated by conservative political strategist Dick Morris who told a reporter, "I think Rick Scott is a criminal who belongs in jail not in the governor's office."

Robin Carnahan, running for Missouri's open Senate seat, is the Democrats’ best chance at taking a Senate seat from Republicans.

Since this is a women’s rights blog, that’s where I’ll start. Carnahan would represent women’s interests in the Senate. She helped create and administers Safe at Home, a program to protect the homes of victims of domestic violence and stalking, which has helped keep 700 Missourians save over the last three years. She is pro-choice and believes in continued support of Title IX and the Civil Rights Act to further women’s equality. And just because it’s October and breast cancer awareness month, I’ll add that Carnahan is a survivor. That’s not a requirement for any candidate, but a little empathy for women’s health needs never hurts.

Carnahan has championed consumer protection. When Wall Street made trillions (and then collapsed) off of loans the consumer couldn’t repay, Carnahan worked to protect her home state from financial scamming, with legislation like the Senior Investor Protection Act, one of the toughest laws on the books doing just what the title suggests, and the Missouri Investor Protection Center, which educates Missourians on how to protect themselves from financial fraud. Carnahan has helped tens of thousands of investors recover over $10 billion in losses. (See a longer bio and list of accomplishments here.)

Carnahan is in a tough race against her opponent, Republican Congressman Roy Blunt. Blunt is a good old boy in the GOP where his ties to John Ashcroft and Tom DeLay go back decades. He toes Republicans’ increasingly radical party line and is virulently anti-abortion. EMILY’s List calls him “a far-right social conservative with a 100 percent anti-choice voting record,” and he promotes the lie that the health care reform puts federal money towards abortion (I wish he were right). Blunt is among the top recipients of BP donations in the House and has introduced legislation to cap liabilities for his environmentally-disastrous backer.

Here's how WRKO-AM radio producer in Boston, Bill Cooksey, chose to endorse Republican state treasurer candidate Karyn E. Polito:  “I think she’s hot. She’s tiny, she’s short. She’s got a banging little body on her. Facial wise, I give her about a seven. Body wise, I give her about an eight-and-a-half. Tight little butt. I endorse Karyn Polito.” The  station has refused to issue an apology.

This is the same sexist language — and sexist perception of women — that plagues them as they try to move forward in careers across the board. Women work hard to prove they're serious and intelligent only to be evaluated and objectified based on their appearance. The only reason this continues is that people think it's no big deal.

But using gender stereotypes to describe candidates matters, both culturally and at the polls. As fellow blogger Roxy MtJoy wrote last week, sexist attacks against women actually hurt female candidates chances. In fact, if women candidates don't fight back, they sink even farther in the public's estimation. I'm not sure what the statistics are — or if there are any — on women who receive sexist endorsements. However, the sexist attack and the sexist endorsement are part of the same problem: assessing a candidate based on her sex rather than her politics.