Friday Feminist Round Up: Martha Raddatz, Reddit Creepshots, and Reproductive Rights

Happy Friday!

As I mentioned in my interview with Jake over at the PolicyMic editors’ blog, every Friday I’ll be posting a link round-up featuring my favorite articles across the web, as there are always more issues to discuss, and more voices to be heard!

Firstly, let’s all agree on one very important detail in the vice presidential debate last night: Martha Raddatz totally killed it. (Of course, some disagreed.) Her performance mattered to future generations of debate moderators — and especially to Chamillionaire.

Ann Friedman breaks it down: “Like it or not, prestigious jobs such as moderating presidential debates are reserved for the most seasoned veterans. And once they hit a certain age, many women are nudged off-camera … both because of age discrimination now and more rampant sex discrimination in earlier decades, it’s not crazy to assume that there’s a fairly small pool of women to pick from — to say nothing of the paucity of non-white journalists who meet the 'seasoned veteran' criteria that the Commission on Presidential Debates employs.”

I actually read this piece by Anne Elizabeth Moore on being nice but writing the truth last week, but it’s so poignant that I have to share it nonetheless.

“To write the truth — as opposed to writing truthfully, writing down true things, writing one’s version of truth, or completing an assignment for the Think Piece Industrial Complex on the subject of truthiness — one must, according to Bertolt Brecht, accrue four skills beyond courage: the keenness to spot truth, the strength to wield it powerfully, the judgment to bestow it upon those who will use it, and the cunning to communicate it effectively.”

Beautiful.

A YouTube video of Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, a misogynist made the feminist rounds this week.

Amelia Lester explains what it all means in the New Yorker.

“So why is this among the most-shared videos by my American friends today? Purely as political theatre, it’s great fun. Americans used to flipping past the droning on in empty chambers that passes for legislative debate in this country are always taken in by the rowdiness of parliamentary skirmish. It could also be that the political dynamic depicted in the clip parallels the situation in the States: a chief executive who is a “first” took power after a long period of control from the right of center, and whose signature policy achievements have at times been overshadowed by personal vitriol.”

Abortion and birth control issues were mentioned briefly in Thursday’s vice presidential debate, although many important domestic issues weren’t. And the discussion over reproductive rights barely skimmed the surface of the complexity of these issues.

At ColorLines, Akiba Solomon reports.

“[R]eproductive healthcare options are increasingly limited for people who are poor, uninsured, without a medical home and reliant on an ever-fraying healthcare safety net. These women — disproportionately Latinas and African American — are bearing the true brunt of the renewed attack on publicly funded family planning services. Nearly a third of all women who used those services in 2010 were Latina, and nearly 20% were black.”

And finally, here at PolicyMic, Michael Luciano takes on creepshots.

“[Creepshots] and parallel forms of sexualizing women publicly without their consent is a huge indicator of what we culturally perceive women’s public roles to be. That you have no reasonable expectation of privacy while appearing in public is a given in the United States. But there should be a reasonable expectation of not being exploited or harassed,” explains Deanna Zandt at Forbes.

Is there anything I missed on the interwebs this week? Leave a link in the comments! Relax, get ready for the next presidential debate, and have a great weekend. Personally, I’ll be doing what I do every weekend…