Iris: A Journal About Women articles from March 2005

Iris: A Journal About Women archives from March 2005

Editor's letter.
March 22, 2005... As part of her straight-faced crusade to rescue Valentine's Day and "romantic love" from The Vagina Monologues, right-wing darling Christina Hoff Sommers (author of "Who Stole Feminism?" and "The War Against Boys") travels the country...

Diana's Secrets.(poem)(Poem)
March 22, 2005... Diana's Secrets In the garden is buried my grandmother's corpse. It is shaded by the hue of a sun gone cold in winter, and so it gives solace. My father's a horse. Elaine and Robin have been beyond the subdivision. ...

Sexual assault on campus.(Look Out!)
March 22, 2005... The prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses and the prevalence of what Peggy Reeves Sanday calls "rape-prone culture" have been hot-button issues for young women activists since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a constellation...

Clery act timeline.(Look Out!)(Jeanne Arm Clery)
March 22, 2005... April 5, 1986: Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Arm Clery is raped and murdered in her residence hall room. 1987: Clery's parents discover that Lehigh students had not been informed of 38 violent crimes which had occurred on the campus...

Extreme makeover freedom edition: an American Beauty School sets up shop in Afghanistan: Debbie Rodriquez is an instructor at the Beauty Without Borders school in Kabul and a practitioner of tough love.
March 22, 2005... Upon discovering that only a few of her students wear makeup, she tells them, "You're stuck in a rut, guys. You're stuck in a hole of the past that you can't get out of and, my God, before I leave here, you're getting out of the hole." (1)...

Girls girls girls: interview with Becky Goldberg.(Interview)
March 22, 2005... In her 2002 documentary Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography, filmmaker Becky Goldberg makes a seeming paradox totally plausible with an uncensored look at women who perform, direct, produce, and sell feminist pornography. Screened at...

Mary Finlayson.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2005... My paintings are inquiries. I paint to find answers, and I have found that often the question becomes equally important. I use the paintings to work through my own questions. Mainly the paintings critique or investigate the relevance and...

Four for four: four questions for four women.(Interview)
March 22, 2005... Ann Telnaes is a freelance political cartoonist whose work takes aim at the Bush administration and champions progressive causes. www.anntelnaes.com What current women's issue concerns you the most? How the status of women is...

R is for revolution: radical cheerleaders shake it up!
March 22, 2005... Chances are, if you've been to a protest in the past few years, you've seen radical cheerleaders. You may have gawked as they thrust their black pom-poms skyward, dressing down the World Trade Organization with clever cheers. Perhaps you...

On First Wearing Her Mother's Necklace.(poem)(Poem)
March 22, 2005... On First Wearing Her Mother's Necklace Snow lies deep on the meadow. A bank of light over the mountains wakes her, so huge at first she doesn't know this is a cloud lit by the moon, but stares as though at a...

To have and to hold down.
March 22, 2005... Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Plan me no plans I'm in no rush Maybe I've learned Playing with matches A girl can get burned So, Bring me no ring Groom me no groom Find me no find Catch me no catch...

What Rhymes With.(poem)(Poem)
March 22, 2005... What Rhyme With III. Paired Most people don't realize the sad fate of a nail. No one thinks of who shaped the thing, molded it out of hot, liquid metal. If people think about a nail at all, they think of how...

Absolutely flabulous: three interviews with size-acceptance activists.(Interview)
March 22, 2005... American culture isn't sized to fit most Americans: though 60 percent of us are deemed overweight or obese, airplane seats remain suitable only for tight glutes, mean-spirited fat jokes still elicit yuks, and the media perpetuates the idea...

Chromosome 6.(Short Story)
March 22, 2005... Lacey stepped in out of the wet Chicago night wearing an open gray raincoat and a short black dress, a run in her stocking slithering all the way up from the left ankle strap of her high-heeled Mary Janes to the barely visible shadow of her...

Land of the free home of the closely observed: the patriot act brings big brother to the courtroom.
March 22, 2005... In 2002, it wasn't unusual for John Ashcroft to show up in or around your hometown, shake your hand, and then give you a spiel about the virtues of the Patriot Act. In the months after the Patriot Act was passed, national outrage about the...

Intersections.(poem)(Poem)
March 22, 2005... Intersections I the past is sprouting from the cracked sidewalk. pushing its way through the pale concrete, as if new jersey could rise again inside me. its muscular arms pulling at the length of my...

Red oleanders.(Short Story)
March 22, 2005... It was the hottest stretch of the summer so far and my mother and I were riding to the train depot in the middle of a weekday afternoon in Ramon Ramirez's yellow taxi. This was in Brownsville, in the days before the horny toads all died and...

Oh, man. Men talk women.
March 22, 2005... Do you think most women trade sex for love? "Sex doesn't matter as much to women; they are more emotional about relationships than we are. Sex is how they get a relationship." Brandon, 28 "Absolutely. Because my girlfriend does it...

Prelude to This.(poem)(Poem)
March 22, 2005... Poem Prelude to This This is the story of a girl & the sea, & what the sea did to the girl, the vast flat lidless eye of a sea, with relentless waves receding over its glassy lens, the monochromatic iris & pupil...

Ashlee Ferlito.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2005... tired of fighting oil on canvas 48" x 58" This is a painting about not wanting to fight anymore. I found this little toy bull, and with its head down I saw myself and my fatigue reflected. I like taking something small and plastic and...

Runaway.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Runaway by Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf, October 2004) In Runaway, Alice Munro's 11th collection of stories, she delves into the deep recesses of Canadian past, filtering through time for moments of illumination. Joyce would have called...

The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy: Women, Politics, and the Future.
March 22, 2005... The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy: Women, Politics, and the Future by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Seal Press, September 2004) The well-being of feminism is still a favorite debate topic for feminists and conservatives--but lately they don't...

Ariel: The Restored Edition.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath (HarperCollins, November 2004) On Feb. 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath committed suicide in her London flat. On her desk lay a black spring binder containing a manuscript of 40 poems, along with 19...

Callings.(Poem)
March 22, 2005... Callings "Sandra. From Alexandra, Greek: Helper and Defender of Mankind I. I should prefer one of those flower names, yellow and blooming, waiting to be gathered. A middle name that doesn't...

LeTigre This Island.(Sound Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... LeTigre This Island (Universal, 2004) The women of Le Tigre are angry. This should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever experienced their particularly political brand of poppy electro-punk; of course they want to make you dance,...

Arcade Fire Funeral.(Sound Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Arcade Fire Funeral (Merge Records, 2004) It would be expected, at this point, to begin this review of Canadian group Arcade Fire's debut album Funeral with heaping praises. After all, everyone else is doing it. Critics at snooty...

Loretta Lynn Van Lear Rose (Interscope, 2004).(Sound Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Like her forebears in Appalachian Kentucky, Loretta Lynn has spent her life writing open, disarming songs about the resonance of everyday events. She once told an interviewer, "Back in the mountains, they wrote about everything that happened....

The future of safe sex.(Look out!)
March 22, 2005... Abstinence Education Abstinence-only sex education programs, a major plank in President Bush's education plan, have had no impact on teenagers' behavior in his home state of Texas, according to a new study done by researchers at Texas...

Sexism is a disease!(ask iris' own Auntie Virus)
March 22, 2005... Dear Auntie Virus: Why do so many sitcoms feature obnoxious and conventionally unattractive men married to patient, doting, beautiful women? Signed, Doesn't Seem Funny. Dear DSF: Why indeed? And while we're at it, why...

Say what?
March 22, 2005... 19: Factor by which the rate of new HIV/AIDS cases among African-American women exceeds the rate among white women. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) "I just assumed this is what comes of being 42 and single I don t know if...