(Thanks to Colleen of The Feminist Blog for pointing this one out)

The state government in Texas has passed a law requiring equitable coverage for contraception in health insurance plans [NOW]. It joins 15 other states in requiring health insurance providers to not discriminate against contraceptive devices in their prescription benefit plans, and makes another stride in making women’s health care more accessible and affordable. Sadly, a similar law failed in the Alabama state legislature. Oh well: we’ll organize more, we’ll come back stronger, and this time we will win.

Update your bookmarks: The Feminist Blog has moved to its own nifty domain and no more ads. And Colleen (who is totally rad and very nice, too) is working on a very interesting-looking project, the Center Against Sexist Media, which is currently projected to debut on Sep. 20.

Read the rest of The Feminist Blog Moves …

There are still only a few Leftists who continue to believe that the revolution in Iran and the Ayatollah’s regime was something that deserves support from the Euro-American Left (I suspect that their psychological profiles are similar to those of the last few ardent Stalinists who hung on through the 1950s and 1960s and refused to acknowledge the horrors perpetrated by the Soviet tyranny). Nevertheless, they — as well as anyone who thought that Iran was well on its way to becoming a liberal democracy under a reformist regime — should consider the following: feminist filmmaker Tahmineh Milani has been arrested at the order of the reactionary Revolutionary Court on charges that her film The Hidden Half insults Islamic values and slanders the 1979 revolution [Independent Media Center]. The arrest is part of a broader campaign restricting dissent which has closed several dissident newspapers and imprisoned several activists, but Milani’s arrest marks the first time that artists have been targeted.

For further reading:

• GT 5/17/2001 reports on the decision by the Guardian Council of Iran that women cannot run for president under the revolutionary constitution

StopFamilyViolence has established a new petition urging the post office to make child abuse prevention the beneficiary of the US Postal Service’s next fund-raising stamp (similar to the Breast Cancer fundraising stamp, which has raised $21 million for breast cancer research). Please sign their petition to the postal service to support this awesome chance for working to end family violence.

Just two days after the women of Sirt’s month-long strike strike from sex with their husbands hit the international AP newswire, and attained global celebrity, the striking women declared victory [CNN] in their efforts to improve the village’s abysmal water system. As the strike pressed on, the men of the village finally frantically lobbied the government for help in fixing the system, and the Directorate of Rural Affairs has agreed to provide the men of Sirt with five miles of piping so that water can be brought directly to the village from a nearby source. The men of Sirt will work to lay the pipe themselves. Although some women have decided to end the boycott immediately with the announcement, others will continue to refuse sex until the pipe-building project is completed.