The following is a guest post by Mrs. Matthew Black, member of the Twin Cities chapter of Ladies Against Women.  Though I object to everything she wrote here, she threatened to reveal my eBay username if I didn’t allow her to post this unedited. –SD

On April 28, 2012, I was invited by local ladies of my acquaintance to attend an event relating to this War on Women that everyone’s talking about. I usually don’t express myself in public in this manner (preferring to let my husband speak for me, of course), but I felt that a War on Women was something that the ladies and I could get behind. Here we are:

Photo credit: a young man who was thrilled to be of service

Mrs. Ballentine looks depressed because she accidentally left her pearls at home, the poor dear.  I would chide her for this oversight if I weren’t guilty of a crime against decency myself–the wearing of white shoes before Memorial Day.  I share this unretouched photo in hopes that my gentle readers will learn from my mistake:

Photo credit: Mrs. Robert Rolle

It will take a little more than a wardrobe faux pas to keep me from speaking my mind about this War on Women.  As I said in my remarks, just about everything wrong with America can be traced back to the day in 1920 when non-male adults were given permission to vote.  On this issue I agree with Miss Ann Coulter, though I don’t make it a habit to pay attention to women who don’t have the sense to get married at least once.  Even vulgar trollops like Misses Madonna Ciccone and Britney Spears have been married twice each (just not to each other, for heaven’s sake).

Photo credit: Mrs. Robert Rolle

Confidential to strapping bachelors and wealthy widowers: Miss Emily Johnston, the young lady holding my umbrella, is single and looking for a breadwinner who will allow her occasional use of his Kohl’s card!  Interested gentlemen may send resumes, sperm counts, and credit reports to MrsMatthewBlack@LadiesAgainstWomen.org.

The crowd really seemed to enjoy my story about how I reacted when people assumed I supported Michele Bachmann for president.  The very idea of a WOMAN president gives me horrible gas.  It twists me up so that I can’t help making faces like this:

Photo credit: some feminist in cahoots with Sen. Sandy Pappas, a speaker at the rally

Here’s something that keeps me popping Tums late into the night: I assumed a member of the Minnesota legislature who goes by “Sandy” must have the first name Alexander on his birth certificate.  Was I ever wrong!  This Sandy creature and Michele Bachmann are two of a kind–women who forgot that they are supposed to be working in the kind of house that has a white picket fence around it.  Leave the state and federal Houses to the menfolk, please!

It’s my great hope that this day of rallies in support of the War on Women will alert ladies and the gentlemen who support them to the danger posed by women legislators, contraceptives, and the unmarried.  I invite ladies across the country to join me in not voting on November 6.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Matthew Black

…well, most of us were standing.  Some of us were playing Angry Birds Space on the iPod.

If The Radical Housewife: The Blog has been quiet lately, it’s only because the radical housewife, the person ( i.e. me) has been so very, very busy.  In a few days Minnesota NOW is hosting its combined state & regional conference, and I’ve been typing my wrists off in an attempt to publicize it.  But if my six years at the helm of this organization have taught me anything, it’s that the local media doesn’t care much about feminist actions that lack the word “slut” in the title.

(note to self: change conference name to “SLUTFEST 2012,” take phone off hook)

But no amount of press releases could get in the way of last Friday’s annual solidarity event at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood.  We travel across the river every Good Friday to show our support for the clinic’s staff and patients, who must endure the presence of literally busloads of antis that day.

Two years ago,  Minnesota Public Radio News printed my essay on why I bring my family every year.  An excerpt:

Those who oppose abortion demand to know why I would bring my children to a place they consider incompatible with their “family values.”  In reply, I point out that my family reinforces my commitment to reproductive freedom.

As a stay-at-home mom, I experience frustration, exhaustion and anxiety at every turn, and I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m as lucky as Bristol Palin was lucky to have financial and emotional support in place for her to consider parenthood at 17. I’m as lucky as Pam Tebow was to have given birth to a healthy baby boy.

Bristol, Pam, and I are fortunate, indeed……[but] our experiences are ours alone, and cannot be expected to set the standard for every other woman across the globe.  Like other structures and systems, families function best when they develop deliberately.

Speaking of families, here’s an absolutely adorable one, featuring some Minnesota NOW friends.  My preggo tummy wasn’t nearly this cute when I waddled on Good Friday 2005:

I suspect the little girl is grimacing because she knows Elliott and Miriam were the ones who hoovered up the cookies at the volunteer table.  Sorry, kiddo.

This year I allowed Elliott to film a portion of our visit.  Serendipitously, my sister and her daughter arrived to meet us as Elliott filmed.  Now that’s what I call FAMILY VALUES!

Until next year, kids.

If you’re in the Twin Cities area this weekend, don’t forget to stop by SLUTFEST and say hello!

It has come to my attention that my recent blogs have been using the category “Idiots” far more often than the category “Awesome.”

Perhaps that explains why I am so far behind in the 2012 Circle of Moms Top Political Mom Blogs contest.  As of this writing, I am #23 in the rankings.  Though I don’t mind losing to The Mamafesto, Blue Milk, PunditMom and current leader Monologues of Dissent, I MIND VERY MUCH that I’m 12 places behind Pamela Geller, a racist so virulent she’s being watched by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sigh.

I hereby vow to be more proactive about sharing all that is awesome with my readers.  I’ll start with an heartfelt appreciation of my representative in Congress, Keith Ellison, shown here at the 2011 Minnesota State Fair with two adorable constituents and their dorky mom*:

Rep. Ellison issued the following statement yesterday, after previously confidential reports showed that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is using a race-based strategy to pursue its decidedly non-awesome agenda:

The exposed documents reveal that NOM’s ‘strategic goal’ is to ‘drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies.’

Our nation was founded on the principle of liberty and justice for all people—regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. NOM is clearly opposed to these basic ideals that so many Americans hold dear.

I call on people from all backgrounds to speak out against NOM’s agenda and vote NO on the anti-marriage amendment this November.

Isn’t that awesome?  I bet you’re jealous that Rep. Ellison doesn’t represent you.  

But there’s more!  Check out this video from the House floor, taken only hours ago:

Damn!  I wish Rep. Ellison had done that, and I’m so glad Rep. Rush did.  But since no one can vote for either of them until November, please make sure you vote for me, NOW!

AWESOME!

*Confidential to Ms. Geller: yes, I did let a practicing Muslim near my children.  Shortly after this photo was taken, my children and I were killed in a terrorist attack.**

**Just kidding!  Pamela Geller is a racist idiot!  Please don’t let her win!  Vote for ME!  

What follows is a commentary on the latest in the embarrassment that is the negotiations to build a new Vikings stadium (owned by the 1%) here in Minneapolis, WITHOUT putting the matter to a voter referendum (which would involve consulting the 99%).  It was written by Ed Felien, publisher & editor of Southside Pride, and is excerpted here with his permission.  

Photo via The Uptake

A “People’s Stadium?” Really?

By Ed Felien

[Minneapolis mayor] R T Rybak and [Minnesota governor] Mark Dayton are going to tear down the existing Metrodome because, we are told, it’s outdated. It doesn’t have enough luxury boxes, so it doesn’t make enough money for billionaire Zygi Wilf . Ticket prices have to be higher. Ticket prices for a Viking game are already so high that most people who live in the City can’t afford them, but R T and Dayton are going to send us a bill for $338.7 million to tear down the existing stadium and build an even more expensive one. And they’re calling that a “People’s Stadium”…..

In 1977 the Minneapolis City Charter was amended in a referendum with almost 70% of the voters approving a provision that requires the City to get the voter’s approval on any expenditure for a sports stadium that exceeds $10 million. R T and the legislature believe they can sidestep a Minneapolis referendum on this question because the City of Minneapolis is granted its charter by the State of Minnesota. And what the State granteth, the State can taketh away….

How is this stadium a “People’s Stadium?” The existing Metrodome is quite adequate for high school football, soccer games and monster truck rallies. The only difference between the existing stadium and the new one would be the addition of more luxury boxes for Viking games. That’s a benefit for Viking ticket holders.

There are 64,111 seats in the current Viking stadium. There are 5,344,861 people in the State of Minnesota. So, that’s not a case of the 99% subsidizing the 1%. That’s a case of the 99.9% subsidizing the 0.1%.

It’s certainly a case of the taxpayers of Minneapolis subsidizing the ticket prices of wealthy people generally living in the suburbs. Those same people elect State Senators and Representatives that have cut financial aid to the cities, so that city property taxes now subsidize suburban and rural police and fire departments.

Carol Becker, the city-wide representative on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, has said, “$300 M at a modest 3% a year interest rate is roughly about $20 M a year each year for 20 years. When you divide this by the number of people in Minneapolis, you get a figure of $53 per person per year. Or for my family, it is a whopping $159 dollars a year for a football stadium. $159 a year!”

Minneapolis could buy a lot of police and fire protection for $20 million a year.

If this were a genuine “People’s Stadium,” it would be open to kids in the neighborhood; it would be a sports and health club that poor people could enjoy; it would have a swimming pool so people could exercise in the winter; it would be built with strict affirmative action guidelines making sure that neighborhood people (where there is the highest unemployment in the City) would be employed.

R T claims he’s a tough negotiator. He’s not. He gave away the store.

We’re giving away $368 million that could have been used to help the City budget in exchange for the privilege of watching rich suburbanites come in here and tailgate.

 ”MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS, NOT FOR STADIUMS!”

I love gossip.  Love it.  I’m into good old-fashioned dirt, not the phony baloney that is manufactured by Kris Jenner and shoved down our throats in a series of “exclusive” photo spreads and television specials.  Brangelina delights me, as did All My Children before it went off the air.  The scandalous campfest Valley of the Dolls is one of my favorite movies of all time.

But there remains a species of gossip so tantalizing, so unbelievably marvelous that it blows away the timeNeely O’Hara flushed Helen Lawson’s wig down the toilet.  I’ll give you a hint: Larry Craig, Newt Gingrich, George Rekers. When a “family values” politician or activist gets caught with their hands in the cookie jar!

First, let us travel back to a more innocent time, namely 2009, when Minnesota Senator Amy Koch sponsored a bill that would amend our state constitution to limit marriage to heterosexuals only.  Koch, herself a heterosexual, is married to a man named Christopher.  One assumes that she felt her civil marriage contract with Christopher might be threatened by happily hitched gay folks, I dunno. It was something she felt deserved her time and attention during a recession, anyway.

It’s worth noting that in the 2009 session, Koch received a 100% rating from the Minnesota Family Council, a group so retrograde they oppose even popular measures like civil unions and, y’know, stopping the bullying of LGBT students (I hear their next piece of legislation will be to ban the phrase “don we now our gay apparel” from “Deck the Halls”).

In 2010, Koch became Senate Majority Leader, just in time to cram the divisive, expensive, and just gosh-darned Grinchy Marriage Amendment down our throats, which is just what Minnesota needed to create jobs…..for the soulless hacks at the ad agency for the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese.

But wait!  What’s this?  Did Santa leave a present a little early for us this year? Via CityPages:

Santa, who puts hypocrites, not necessarily adulterers, on his Naughty List, has made sure that this story gets the viral treatment it so richly deserves.  The giant, sparkly bow on this gift that many national outlets are missing?  That Koch’s alleged paramour is none other than Michael Brodkorb, founder of the giant blog o’ sleaze that is Minnesota Democrats Exposed, a site that deals in hearsay, innuendo, and “reliable sources.”   MDE joined my personal naughty list in 2008 when it implied that writing an article in an old issue of Playboy magazine OBVIOUSLY made Senate candidate Al Franken a misogynistic pornographer (the President of Minnesota NOW, however,  begged to differ).  The humiliating exposure of a former exposer is an irony even more delicious than eggnog.

I love gossip.  I love just deserts. I LOVE THE HOLIDAYS!  Enjoy, all!

Me & my buddy Farheen at SlutWalk Minneapolis, October 1, 2011

Farheen Hakeem is one of the smartest, funniest, and most forthright people I have ever met.  These are wonderful qualities to have in a friend, but they are even better to have in a public servant. Luckily, Farheen is running for Minnesota State Senate, and tomorrow, I will cast a vote for her in a special election to replace retiring Senator Linda Berglin.

There are many on the political left here in my state who find Green Party members like Farheen pesky at best and scary at worst.  They say they would never vote for a non-Democrat in the state that gave the world Dem idols like Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, and Paul Wellstone.

But you know what I find scary?

• Last year, 18 Minnesota Democrats voted for the so-called Pain Capable Unborn Child Act that would criminalize any abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation, and 15 Minnesota Democrats in the State House and Senate voted in favor of a law that would ban state funds for abortion care, despite the 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that struck down an earlier ban, saying such a law places “undue financial constraints” on low-income women.
• Last week, Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson voted YES on HR 358, nicknamed the “Let Women Die” Act, which greatly expanded permission for health professionals to refuse to perform reproductive health care services, including immediately life-threatening ones.
• Today, Minnesota Democrat Mark Dayton (who thankfully vetoed the two insane anti-choice bills mentioned above) is holding meetings to discuss building a new stadium for the Vikings, with $300 million in state funds, during an ongoing economic crisis that has left my kids’ two south Minneapolis schools overcrowded, understaffed, and gutting their desperately needed special education, sports, arts, and gifted & talented programs.

Does THAT sound like Wellstone’s legacy to you?  I didn’t think so.

The days of trusting one party blindly are over.  Farheen Hakeem is not beholden to a system that favors the status quo over positive change in our community.   She’s an experienced community organizer (like some other politicians we know), as well as a math teacher and foster parent to a child in public schools.  She knows that people in Minneapolis need jobs, educations, health care, and homes–they don’t want the legislative priorities to be tax breaks for millionaires or billion-dollar sports venues the average person can’t afford to enter.  Farheen is the 99% and is committed to working for the 99%!

I hope you’ll join me in casting your vote tomorrow for a true Minnesota progressive: Farheen Hakeem!

I know there are millions of posts that we blog addicts deem “must-reads,” but yesterday’s by s.e. smith on TigerBeatdown is one that truly earns that title.  In an essay called “On Blogging, Threats, and Silence,” smith writes about her experiences with online threats, opening her piece with the very startling revelation:

I got my first rape threat as a blogger when I was on Blogspot, so new that I still had the default theme up… someone really had thought it was appropriate not just to write this email to a complete stranger, a totally unknown person, but to send it.

Smith’s point is not just to reveal how very often this happens to women bloggers, but also to illuminate how often our concerns are minimized with the advice “don’t feed the trolls.”

It’s concerted, focused, and deliberate, the effort to silence people…..this is the strategy that has been adopted, to not feed the trolls, to grin and bear it, to shut up, to put your best foot forward and rise above it….when it happens to people for the first time, they think they are alone, because they don’t realise how widespread and insidious it is.

Regular readers of The Radical Housewife know about my resident antagonist, one Neal Krasnoff.  He’s been on my case since a 2008 Minnesota Women’s Press column in which I expressed support for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. At the time, he blogged under a pseudonym, Nachman, and the depth of his venom so rattled me that I did a little digging and discovered that his was typical of a million pseudonymous blogs in which the author assumes that “anonymity” grants carte blanche to express opinions that would never be tolerated in polite company.  Among Neal’s bugaboos were feminism, LGBT rights, and any support for Palestinian human rights, and in his blog he heaped scorn upon Twin Cities folks active in any of these civil rights movements.

But Neal wasn’t anonymous, really.  It took only a handful of Google searches to discover his real name and that he was, in fact, a local activist with the Minnesota DFL Party.

The DFL?? Minnesota’s Democratic Party? Really? Why, yes!  This is the party whose platform states opposition to “discrimination against any person on the basis of race, creed, religion, immigration status, sex, sexual or affectational orientation, HIV status, gender identity or expression, marital or homemaker status, disability or age.”

Huh.

Do you think Neal would allow his Nachman persona to speak aloud at DFL meetings?  Not likely.  Do you think Neal, like those who targeted s.e. smith, TigerBeatdown, and other bloggers, took advantage of this perceived “anonymity” as well as bloggers’ ongoing reluctance to talk about it?

This summer, I had enough.  Inspired by news of  the upcoming SlutWalk Minneapolis, Neal wrote as disturbing a piece of rape apologia as I have ever read, and he made sure the post included the name of its director, my friend Kim Sherva, in an attempt to rattle her as I had once been rattled.  I responded with a piece I called “To our male allies: a challenge,” in which I identified Neal by name.  And take it from me, friends: NOTHING TERRIFIED HIM MORE.

He closed up his blog for a time.  He officially resigned from the DFL Party.  He begged me to redact his name, to stuff the genie named Nachman back in the bottle.  Today, his blog contains the longest rant against me yet, with specific threats of legal action against me and veiled threats of personal harm in calling me  ”Shannon Drury (YM”SH).” For those whose Hebrew is rusty, this is apparently a curse that calls for the destruction of a person and her memory.  I’m not certain myself, so I think I’ll ask the rabbi with whom I’m meeting next week (I’m not kidding–I really am).

In the words of s.e. smith:

I’m still not going to shut up, and not just because I am bullheaded and don’t take kindly to being told to be silent or die. I don’t shut up for all the people who were forced to shut up, for the ghosts who drift through the Internet, for the people too terrified to leave their homes at all, let alone try to coordinate safety concerns to attend events, for the people who ask friends to open and sort their email because they can’t handle the daily vitriol. I don’t shut up for all the people who have been silenced, who did throw in the towel because they just couldn’t take it anymore. 

I hope you, dear reader, will join me in accepting smith’s call to keep talking about this on our blogs,  our social media sites, and in our communities.  Refuse to be silenced.  Demand accountability.  Speak out!

Since you ALL watched the video in my last post, you’re ALL fans of Barbra Peterson, and where she leads, you follow.  Amirite?

Here’s a photo of Barbra with her friend, and the latest entrant in the race for Minnesota’s 8th House District,  Daniel Fanning.  Fanning, a longtime DFL activist and Iraq vet who most recently worked as field coordinator for Sen. Al Franken, will formally announce his candidacy in Duluth next Sunday.

Fanning is not only in gorgeous company, he’s in fine fashion!  When was the last time you saw ANY candidate announce support for feminism so unequivocally, no matter what their gender?  I mean, Sen. Franken is kickass fighter for women’s rights, but I have yet to see him “wear the shirt,” as Gloria Feldt would say.

Barbra can sure pick ‘em!