I remember reading Marilyn French's The Women's Room, her 1977 novel about the world of oppressive, forced domesticity that was the expected lot of women of her generation—French just died at age 79—and being so grateful that world had broken apart because of women like her. Her obits in the Times and the Post show French remained a woman of the second wave of feminism —who saw the institutional oppression by men everywhere and who retained a burning anger about it. Probably she was angry that young woman didn't share her anger. But why should they be incensed about their oppression when they live in a world in which their opportunities are abundant and assumed? As I was reading her obituaries, and feeling that she had become an anachronistic figure, I saw this line quoted from her 1992 book, The War Against Women: "“Men’s need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it.” She suddenly didn't seem so anachronistic anymore, since every day we read in both the Times and the Post about the inroads the Taliban is making into Pakistan. We are living in a time when women on the other side of the world have to worry about having acid thrown in their faces for wanting to go to school, a time in which a nuclear power is ceding territory to a group which beats, even murders women, for leaving the house unaccompanied by a man. Saudi Arabia does not allow its female citizens to drive. A few years ago they let schoolgirls trapped in a fire burn to death because if the firemen rescued them they'd see the girls not completely covered. The urge to dominate—and obliterate—is frighteningly present.

Tags: Marilyn French, Saudi Arabia, second wave feminism, Taliban

A guest post from Slate contributor Vanessa Gezari, who writes frequently about Afghanistan and Pakistan:

Others have remarked on the mainstream media’s penchant for lumping together hip hop with all that’s wrong in the world, up to and including radical Islam. But I was reminded of it once again by a breathless CNN report on the latest video from Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group in Somalia, which the network compares to reality TV “complete with a hip-hop jihad vibe.” The video (which you can watch in part here) is said by al-Qaida watchers to feature Sheikh Abu Mansoor al-Amriki or “the American,” a white, goateed young man who speaks American English, a sort of Adam Gadahn for the Somali music scene, if you buy CNN’s line. The problem is that al-Amriki looks and sounds a lot like some of the guys I went to school with, white dudes whose rap skills ended where their comfortable middle-class backgrounds began. If he’s a rapper, so am I.

Rap has of course become a favorite protest genre for underclasses everywhere, and the originating impulse of American hip-hop is deftly echoed in its French and Palestinian offshoots (“You don’t listen to our voices, you silence and degrade us,” goes a song by Palestinian group DAM. “We fight for our freedom, but you’ve made that a crime.”) Insurgents often echo this sentiment; the problem is that while the music in the Al-Shabaab video sounds sort of like rap, it sounds a lot more like the often beautiful battle songs and Koranic chants that are sung behind al-Qaida and Taliban videos coming out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, a selection of which can be viewed here. You can hear at least two American-sounding voices singing in the Al-Shabaab video, one of them presumably al-Amriki’s. There’s a bit of something like rap there, but to me the tone is more devotional than angry, much like the Qaida video songs, which are often set hauntingly against a background of explosions and gunfire that resembles a drumbeat. The relationship between Al-Shabaab (which means “The Youth”) and al-Qaida is unclear—CNN calls the Somali group “al-Qaida-backed,” yet the Council on Foreign Relations notes that any institutional connection between the groups is “weak, if it exists at all.” The latest video strengthens the case for that relationship, at least in regard to production and soundtrack selection, but does nothing to link hip-hop to global terrorism. Chanting and choral arrangements are much more in line with al-Qaida’s musical taste.

Ms. magazine reports a brief story today about the suspiciously high number of women registering to vote in Afghanistan's upcoming election. Officials are starting to think something is up, given that some of the areas reporting record registration are regions where women don't travel.

Normally, that headline wouldn't merit my second glance, but today it held me. Late last night I finished reading Åsne Seierstad's 2003 account of her infiltration into an Afghani home, The Bookseller of Kabul. Her glimpse into the kitchens, bedrooms, and walled-in courtyards that make up the entire world of many Afghani women is terrifying and tear-inducing.  It provides the backstory to today's news and reveals exactly why those officials sense fraud.  They know that women don't have the freedom to show their faces, fall in love, or earn money, let alone to vote.  And when I read the headline, all I could think about was the stories of Leila, Sharifay, and Sonya.

Stories trigger paradigm changes the way news can't. So just wanted to give a shout-out to all the women journalists out there, like Åsne, whose work transforms far-away issues into intensely personal ones. Let's hope future presidents around the world have the chance to echo what Abe Lincoln supposedly said when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!"

Tags: Åsne Seierstad, afghanistan

Willa, I tried clicking through that Costume Institute Gala slide show, and got ... bored. You'll be shocked (shocked!) to learn that I am no one's idea of fashionable. There are many reasons I live up here in the land of the bluestockings. Among them: Here, I can get away with dressing in a combination of Goodwill, Gap, and Ann Taylor (that last saved for my high-end items: black pants).

But flipping through the frippery did make me think of a film event I attended this winter at Brandeis, featuring Alan Alda and Kate Beckinsale—who, you will also not be shocked to know, is the opposite of my type. (Cf: Rachel Maddow.) It drove me crazy how Beckinsale kept wriggling in her seat, showing off her death-defying heels, legs, and all-but-exposed breasts from first one angle and then another. We've got the point, I texted dryly to my prosecutor. She should sit still now and let my hero Alan Alda speak. My gal texted right back, "Your job is being smart. Her job is being beautiful. Let her do her job."

Tags: bluestockings, Costume Institute, fashion, Rachel Maddow

As part of an anti-domestic violence campaign in Portugal created by Amnesty International, liquid soap in bar and nightclub men's bathroom wall dispensers was replaced with a red soap that looked a lot like blood. The shock tactic was accompanied by a sticker warning that those who do not speak out against domestic violence are partners to the crime. "WASH YOUR HANDS OF IT," the copy howls. Purportedly, those who encountered the substance that resembled blood in color and consistency were hit with "a sense of shock and revulsion." While the campaign's creators claim "the initiative helped increase the level of empathy with the cause," how they came to that conclusion after freaking out drunk guys in Lisbon toilets, it doesn't specify.

Tags: advertising, Amnesty International, domestic violence, Portugal

When we talk about barriers to the entrance of women in the American workforce in the 20th century, the story we tell is largely cultural and economic. Married women with career aspirations had to contend with wage discrimination, marriage bars, and the perception that a working woman was ipso facto a degenerate wife and mother. A neat new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that we often understate the role of basic medical advances when talking about that sudden, collective jump from home to workplace. It's easy to forget how dangerous childbirth used to be; complications associated with sepsis, toxaemia and obstructed labor could ravage a body well into middle age. "Many maternal conditions had very long lasting or chronic effects on health," the researchers report, "hindering women's ability to work beyond their childbearing years."

Using historical data to quantify the effects of various maternal conditions, economists Stefania Albanesi and Claudia Olivetti find that medical advances like the introduction of antibiotics, the standardization of obstetric practice, and the hospitalization of childbirth were absolutely critical to the rise of married women's participation in the labor market over the last century. They also find a very large effect for the introduction of formula as a mainstream alternative to breastfeeding in the 1930s. A typical woman in 1920 between the ages of 23 and 33 would be nursing for something like 40 percent of her potential working time. As Hanna has so forcefully illustrated, our cost/benefit calculations change when we start to consider the possibility that a mother's time might have some kind of value.

Tags: economics, pregnancy, pregnancy discrimination, work life balance, working families, workplace equity

Oh Jess! Rihanna's was just one of many ensembles of interest at this year's Costume Institute Gala, which is sort of like the prom of high fashion, except all the most popular ladies attend on the arm of their main gay. (Or does that make it even more like the prom?) In addition to Rihanna's tux, there was Kate Moss doing her most glamorous Norma Desmond impersonation, various tiny, little dresses, various huge, sculptural ones, some paisley, a caftan, a shout out to Vogue, and Madonna in a Marc Jacobs special—ruched, shiny, puffy in the bum and accompanied by...metaphorical antlers?

I'm sure there are people put off by such a spectacular spectacular in the midst of our great recession (despite rumors the institute was having trouble selling tickets this year, all of the $250,000 tables sold out), but I'm tickled. Look at all these preposterous, gorgeous, ridiculous dresses! Look at how much fun pretty people can have with their clothes when they're not worrying about the worst dressed list but are trying to impress designers and editors instead. If the Oscar red carpet looked like this, even Ryan Seacrest couldn't make it boring.

As for Rihanna's outfit in particular, I'm not as bothered by it as you were, Jess. It may be a bummer that there isn't some swanky, avant garde dress she could have worn that would have conveyed exactly what her tuxedo does—that she's strong, feisty, bold, in control—but there really isn't. If she had come in the perfect gown what would that have said? That she's back to normal? That she looks great? The tux is a way to acknowledge what happened, without having to talk about it (though, she should probably talk about it too). Clothes, especially on this level, are playful and full of quotations (she's not just mimicking the fellas, she's mimicking Marlene Dietrich), which means they don't fall into quite such neat masculine or feminine categories. Look closely at that tux—it's shiny, immaculately fitted, has enormous Snow White shoulders, comes with a killer pair of cigarette pants and very high heels. It's playing on the idea of a man's outfit, more than actually being one. That it plays with our notions of masculinity and femininity, and what an abused woman should look like and wear and how she should behave, is probably exactly why Rihanna chose that outfit in the first place.

Tags: Costume Institute, fashion, Rihanna, Tuxedo

Jeff Rosen's bashing this week of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit—who is on all the Supreme Court short lists—is making the rounds. Glenn Greenwald calls Rosen's attack a "smear" and points out his problematic reliance on anonymous sources. I'm just starting to gather string on the judges on the short list, so I called Jamal Greene, a Columbia law professor who clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi, one of Sotomayor's colleagues. Here's his rebuttal of Rosen's unnamed critics:

I was always impressed with her memos. I thought that they always said exactly what was on my mind. One particular opinion that stands out: Hayden v. Pataki. Not sure that's the opinion she'd want to talk about most, because what she wrote was quite short, but I thought it was also quite brilliant. The case was about whether felon disenfranchisement"—taking away the vote from prisoners—"fell under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as a form of vote dilution or vote denial. Her short dissent said: This is a really easy case, and only becomes difficult if you try to make it that way. There were all these long opinions flying back and forth—Judge Cabranes in the majority, and Judge Parker in dissent, and Guido too. She had a short one that got it right.

Tags: Glenn Greewald, Jeff Rosen, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court

For the first time since she was allegedly beaten by now-ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, Rihanna made a public appearance last night on the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala. Her stroll down the carpet is noteworthy not just because she's been off the celebrity circuit for months, but because she chose to don a Dolce & Gabanna tuxedo. While it may be a mistake to overly scrutinize her clothing choices (or any celebrity's clothing choices, for that matter), her outfit is the way she's choosing to present herself for the first time to the public after a harrowing couple of months. Ostensibly, she is making the statement that she is powerful; that she does not need protection. However, it troubles me that she feels that she needs to dress in masculine garb to express her self-possession. It sends the tacit message that feminine equals weak, and what happened to Rihanna has nothing to do with weakness. Am I reading too far into this, or does anyone else find Rihanna's choice unsettling?

Tags: Chris Brown, dolce & gabbana, menswear, MET Costume Institute Gala, Rihanna