Over at The Root, Lisa Crooms has penned something of a takedown of the recent, very Lysistratan Kenyan sex strike, wherein women, organized by the Nairobi-based Women’s Development Organization, went on an, ahem, handshake-only basis for one week. Their aim, as yet unresolved, was to prevent a breakdown of the fragile coalition government between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki, instated as co-leaders of Kenya after the surprising round of intranational violence in late 2007.

But what’s the point? Crooms writes:

At first glance, the Kenyan women’s sex strike seems like a clever political ploy. Like trying to force a junkie to kick his habit, the women involved are supposedly forcing their men to make a hard choice—put an end to the violence or kiss the pum pum goodbye for at least a week...

But this high-profile political demonstration, which ended last Friday, did more to threaten the image of woman Kenyan activists than it did to threaten Kenyan men. This is the country that elevated the cause of environmentalist and human rights activist Professor Wangari Maathai, who, in 2004, became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Does withholding sex really meet the bar Maathai and other women activists set?"

I personally think conjugal disobedience and coitus interruptus are nothing short of brilliant. The ability to control one’s body, to decide where and when and with whom to have sex is a fundamental right that is almost never freely available to women, even in the United States. Marital rape statistics in America always shock me—and a new study based in Swaziland, which has among the highest rates of HIV infection (26 percent) in sub-Saharan Africa, suggests that the practical and psychological effects of such stolen agency are, of course, longlasting and detrimental.

At the risk of gross oversimplification, the problem of sexual violence is particularly pronounced in African societies matriarchal in name, but patriarchal in practice. From the non-criminalization of marital rape to the still-boiling sex trafficking industry, Croons gives an effective rundown of the various bedroom injustices in Kenya and beyond. (Nations like South Africa have been just shocking offenders on this front as well, and Senators Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold will hold a joint hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee on the endless stream of rapes in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.) Her argument against the now-concluded strike seems to have been that it runs the high risk of backlash, reducing women to what they already often are—a sum of their private parts—rather than focusing on getting, say, more women judges or parliamentarians in government.

But I have a hard time agreeing with that. Where women are so much more vulnerable, it seems almost dangerous to avoid sex politics entirely. Sure, we’re probably talking about it more here, stateside, than they are in the Maasai market in Nairobi. But publicizing the idea that women have agency in sex is way welcome, especially in a culture that these eleven protesting women’s groups describe as ontologically dismissive of female sexual desire. As one of the organizers told the British Telegraph: "We have looked at all issues which can bring people to talk and we have seen that sex is the answer."

Tags: kenyan sex strike, Lysistrata, marital rape

Over on Slate, there's a really interesting piece by Ray Fisman about the importance of female mentorship. Apparently, a recent working paper from the NBER found a way to measure the effects of female vs. male teachers on students at the Air Force Academy. It can be hard to distinguish among various complicating factors when studying how teachers influence students, but rigid protocols at the Academy apparently make it easier to isolate these factors. As Fisman puts it, the study found that "replacing a male instructor with a female one has such a strong effect on female achievement as to erase the gender gap entirely." That's a pretty powerful finding, and the study is persuasive. Check out the whole piece; lots of interesting stuff in it. Now the $64 million question is: How do we make sure that women encounter the mentors and teachers they need—especially in those fields where women are scarce?

Tags: gender gap, math, Science

It’s been a whole day since I first read Jason Whitlock’s Foxsports.com column defending ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips, who was fired from the network after having an affair with a 22-year-old production assistant, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.

Whitlock’s main point is that “[a] little off-the-books nookie should not infringe on man's ability to discuss bats and balls in October.” I’m going to set aside the obvious fact that a job at ESPN is a privilege, not a right, and if an employee does something to embarrass the network, of course he can be fired. (Yep, the woman got fired, too.)

If I didn’t know better—if, say, I didn’t know that Whitlock has riffed on this before and that we did not have the Internet thousands of years ago—I’d say this column is a fossilized relic from the Neanderthal era. Reluctant as I am to steer traffic toward it, you really must read it for yourself. America’s hardworking men are locked in “battle against Pussy Galore.” Phillips is merely a victim to the forces in society like “women enter[ing] the workforce” and “Viagra, exercise, makeup, perfume, hair extensions, shaved legs, clothes that revealed cleavage.”

In Whitlock’s world, monogamy is outdated and men—heterosexual men, especially—should not be constrained by it. It’s not their fault, after all, if they can’t honor their marriage vows, what with all the hussies in the next cubicle. And why should little wifey mind, as long as she’s getting enough money to buy groceries and clean aprons? And well-off men positively deserve extramarital sex: “[A] moderately famous man earning between $250K and $500K a year should be allowed a mistress he can see weekly, one week-long, $8,000 vacation he can take with his mistress and five strip club nights with his boys a year.” Double those income parameters, and Whitlock grants the man two more strip club nights a year and a love nest for his little tartlet.

Seriously, Jason. What about a woman earning $250,000 or $500,000 a year? If you think sex outside marriage is a right for everyone, why do you keep talking about men as victims of women? Why don’t you throw in just one little reference to the extramarital desires of women?

What is particularly galling about Whitlock’s Don Draper shtick is that he should know better than to say such stupid things. Whitlock wrote a column (since pulled from Foxsports.com) saying that Rush Limbaugh shouldn’t own an NFL team because Limbaugh had said that slavery “had its merits” and that James Earl Ray deserved a Medal of Honor. Of course, Limbaugh had never said any such thing and Whitlock had to apologize.

But Whitlock can’t hide from these comments. They’re attached to his byline. And he should know that sexism is just as bad as racism.

Tags: espn, Jason Whitlock, racism, Rush Limbaugh, sexism, steve phillips

Meredith Shiner and Glenn Thrush at Politico ask the question: Why does the GOP have a "woman problem"—i.e., a problem recruiting female candidates? This should be one of those simple answers to stupid questions situations, because the easy answer is that the Republican party has become the clearinghouse for straight white men angry that they have to share a little power with everyone else. Running too many women, especially women who don't play sexpot or crazed right-wing shill (Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, respectively), would send the skittish angry white men of the party fleeing, hands over their ever-vulnerable man parts.

Unsurprisingly, the Politico writers don't simply write, "Because the Republican party is run by people like Rush Limbaugh, duh," and call it a day. Not that they don't have a few examples of tone-deaf Republicans—such as Pete Sessions, who suggested that women should accept higher insurance premiums, like smokers do—but they balance that out with soft-pedaling remarks from GOP representatives using stereotypes about women being soft or pragmatic in order to explain this situation away. It's more pleasing to Republican egos to think of it in those terms, but if they're serious about recruiting more women, they need to look at certain cold, hard realities.

They could start by admitting it's not just that some Republican men are tone-deaf sexists, but many leaders are open misogynists with serious masculinity anxiety. Maybe they could admit that it's not helpful when Limbaugh uses the term "girl" as an insult, or suggests that power-sharing with women is the equivalent of castration. It might not be wise, if one wants to recruit women, to have your main propaganda network pander for ratings by sexually objectifying women while simultaneously raising the alarm about how female sexuality is ruining our nation. When the Republican base suggests that women should get cervical cancer as a warning to others who might consider becoming sexually active, that sends a signal that women are not only not respected, but openly hated.

But even if you rein in the rhetorical misogyny, you still have to contend with the policy issue. Rep. Deborah Pryce suggests women avoid the GOP because they have "a more practical, less ideological way of approaching life and, therefore, approaching politics," which is a nice way of saying that many female Republican politicians don't enjoy the way that the right wing of their party campaigns on Fear of the Vagina. Call in the Sandra Day O'Connor dilemma: When faced with an "ideological" law requiring that women get their husbands' permission before getting an abortion, O'Connor "pragmatically" rejected the belief that women are the property of their husbands. Not having your full human rights does create practical problems for many women, true—O'Connor herself faced that many times when she was denied job advancement after law school strictly because of her gender.

But don't expect much more from Republicans beyond a little public hand-wringing and some mild recruitment efforts. If they actually made the reforms necessary to attract more female candidates, they'd alienate the "God, guns, and gays" crowd that votes their masculine anxieties, and fears female liberation, gay rights, and someone taking away their phallic symbols above all other things. Without the angry white male vote, the GOP has nothing. It may not even have the female voters it does have now, who are much more likely to be married than Democratic female voters, probably in no small part because women relinquish their voting independence alongside their maiden names when they marry. But if the Republicans can't attract the angry white male voter, they'll probably also lose their wives. And all they'll have left are a handful of hardline racists and people who believe they can repeal the income tax with a well-placed lawsuit, enough to win perhaps 10 percent of the vote if they're lucky.

Tags: Republicans, sexism, women