Short Post 4/14

I assume we will probably discuss the budget cuts in class, but since i've been interested in this issue this week and I was looking at articles anyways, i figured I would post an article about the budget cuts and mention some of the programs that seem to relate to the class in the sense that they will negatively affect women, especially low-income women. I also want to mention that I even though these numbers look huge to most of us, the actual impact on each individual is unknown at this point and it might not even be noticeable.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/whats-getting-cut-in-the-fy-2011-budget/2011/04/11/AFMIynLD_blog.html

$456 million cut from public housing Capital Fund

$942 million cut from Community Development fund

$100 million cut from HOPE VI

These three funds all work to repair and maintain public housing.

(52 percent of all public housing is occupied by elderly or handicapped households, 43 percent by households with children (including some with handicapped heads of household), 56 percent of public housing with children is a single-parent-household,). http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/ushmc/spring95/spring95.html

$17 million cut from family planning agencies like Planned Parenthood.

$870 million cut from department of labor programs for job training, literacy, vocational skills, and welfare-work services.

$103 million cut from legislative branch. (interesting!)

Finally, the department of defense will receive $5 billion more than last year! I was surprised by this one because defense is already our country's biggest source of spending. I'm actually surprised that there aren't more news articles pointing this out because this was one of the only areas that more money way granted for this year compared to last year.

Supremacy Crimes

Steinem

This essay was really interesting because I never thought about this before, especially not from the perspective Steinem took. She claims that white, lower-class males commit supremacy crimes because they are addicted to dominance. She points out that "even if one believes in a biogenetic component of male aggression, the very existence of gentle men proves that socialization can override it." The idea of this problem as an addiction makes sense when you think about how men commit these crimes even though they will have no benefit to him, and will probably result in a worsening of his condition. At the end of her essay Steinem says that this problem of violence (in general) will never be fixed until we challenge the assumption that "males are superior to females, and that males must find a place in male hierarchy, and the ability to dominate is so important that even a mere insult can justify lethal revenge." I think thats a really good point, but she brings it up at the end of her essay and then doesn't expand on it. This could have been just the introduction to a five page essay. I wanted to read more about it but she stopped short. I related her thoughts to an experience I had this fall at Beta Beach. I was standing in the crowd next to my friend. A couple boys in front of us started fighting and right away we were scared. We tried to get away but before we could, my friend was punched in the face by one of the boys fighting. He didn't mean to, he just let his fist swing in the heat of the fight, but he never even noticed that he just punched a girl in the face. Its not fair that even though girls are generally non-violent, we still get hurt as innocent by-standers. If males were less violent, including with other males, it would makes women feel safer around men.