What popular band do/did you just never understand the appeal of?
I never really got 'N Sync, and I'm saying that as someone who saw NKOTB in concert not once, not twice, but five times. And, I kinda like some of Justin Timberlake's solo stuff. The whole 'N Sync thing just baffled me, though.
[Originally posted November 08, 2010.]
Question of the Day
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 18 June 2013: Protestors march in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Protests set off by a 10-cent hike in public transport fares have clearly moved beyond that issue to tap into widespread frustration in Brazil about a heavy tax burden, politicians widely viewed as corrupt, and woeful public education, health, and transport systems. The protests come as the nation hosts the Confederations Cup soccer tournament and prepares for next month's papal visit. [AP Photo]These protests are the largest in Brazil in over 20 years, "as more than 200,000 demonstrators take to the streets of Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and four other major cities to rally on a range of social issues."
Flula Makes the NSA a Solid Offer
Flula, a young white man speaking in German-accented English directly to the camera while sitting in his car: I'm hearing now that, you know, this NSA, they are tapsing everything—my phone conversation and email to messagings with people, you know, computer, hacksing my data of things in my laptop... [shrugs] I say: Okay. You know? NSA, please, do it. My doors, my doors have open, you know? I am not a hider of things; I'm not a dirty, dirty person; you know, I'm squeaksy clean. I think. So do it.Seems fair.
I—I only think perhaps maybe we, you know, make some—make some trade together. You know? If I trade and give to you my data, you know, my privates, perhaps you can give to me something, you know? Maybe you might be like, like my secretary, you know, for a little bit.
Um, for example, um, when you are inside hacksing my laptop, at next time you're doing it, um, as you are hacksing and looking at data, perhaps also you may, ah, clean it up my desktop. You have seen it. It is a— [sighs] I cannot find anything on this—on this desktop! So many icon and [points in the air as if around a desktop screen] photo, photo, photo, image, image, file, file, file, Microsoft Word document, Word document, oh look Excel, and watch out there's 18 of the PowerPoints here, here, here... [sighs]
I cannot find things, so, you know, perhaps clean this for me, you know, on the next time you's here. Or if you are listen to my call, and you can hear I'm maybe in argument, um, with person, you just start to speak, and say, "Excuse me, excuse me—sorry, guys, I must interruption. This is Stacy, uh, you know, Secretary of Flula; he have another call with, like, you know, President of, who knows, Bulgaria or something. [shrugs] You know? BOOM. Problem done; we are out. You know? You have helped me.
These tasks—I think these tasks are nice. I give to you my privates; you give to me, ah, some secretary work. We are evening stevening, so, I think. [shrugs] What do you think? You know? Tell me. Tell me, NSA, what you think—yes or no we should do it—in your secrets way, you know. Send to me a fly robot [mimes a fly buzzing around and flying to his ear]—tiny fly robot who whisper "yes, let's do it," or I don't know what is your system.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you! Bye-bye!
Quote of the Day
"Smart parents are more likely to have smart children, and their greater intelligence will be reflected, on average, in higher incomes. Of course, IQ is only one dimension of talent, but it is easy to believe that other dimensions, such as self-control, ability to focus, and interpersonal skills, have a degree of genetic heritability as well."—Greg Mankiw, former economic adviser to President George W. Bush and Not-President Mitt Romney, in a new paper entitled "Defending the One Percent."
At long last! Finally someone BRAVE ENOUGH to defend the One Percent!
(As you may recall, Mankiw is also a stupendous comedian, who's got some great material about the social safety net.)
You know, leaving aside the total bullshit of IQ being an effective measure of some arbitrary definition of intelligence, I just love the bootstraps-flavored idea that the US rewards intelligence, diligence, and interpersonal skills with wealth. Sure. If there's one thing I always say after meeting a privileged corporate CEO who spends more time on the golf course than in the office where his average employee annually makes a fraction of his hourly wage, and whose primary long-term contribution to the firm will be a PR disaster after he's fired by the board for ethics violations and sent on his way with a seven-figure golden parachute, it's: "What an intelligent and diligent worker with great interpersonal skills that fancy gentleman is! Couldn't we pay nurses less to give him more money?"
2FA, #21
From a conversation after I randomly texted Deeks an image of Val Kilmer one day. I think it was after seeing Val Kilmer talking about how he's been writing a screenplay about Mark Twain for ten years. For the record, neither of us really wants Val Kilmer to be galactic king. And I don't really want to run everything. Deeky does, though.
Fatsronauts 101
Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.
[Content Note: Fat bias; medical malfeasance; body policing.]
#20: Fat people aren't that bright.
This is a narrative about fat people that we see expressed all the time, whether it's surprise at some demonstration of intelligence (see, for example, the shock expressed all over the internet that Mama June had the foresight to financially plan for her children's future, or the existence of fat PhD candidates), or contemptuous head-shaking at our failure to exhibit comprehension of how Not Being Fat works: The last time I visited my previous doctor, whose prescription for everything is "lose weight," and tried to address with him that my level of fitness changes based on diet/exercise changes but my weight doesn't, he responded by laughing in my face and telling me: "Eat less. Get moving. It isn't rocket science."
Well. I may not be a rocket scientist, but at least I can read. Competently enough to know that humans aren't Bunsen burners.
Anyway.
Fat people are stupid. This is a narrative that gets transmitted all the time. We are too stupid to understand our own bodies. We are too stupid to be engaged in our own healthcare. We are too stupid to make "good choices." We are too stupid to understand how weight loss works. There is a website called "You Are Fat Because You're Stupid." If we are content in our bodies, we are too stupid to realize we should be embarrassed of ourselves and filled with self-loathing. Multiple studies have been funded purporting to find a link between "obesity and stupidity." Surveys have found there is job discrimination based on employers' assumption that fat applicants aren't as smart. If a filmmaker or showrunner wants to indicate that a character is soooooo stupid, there's a pretty good chance that character will be fat. The caricature of the Stupid Middle-American is always fat. Adorably daft animated characters in children's stories are usually fat. If there's a good-hearted but simple-minded (male) character in a fantasy series, odds are on fat.
"Fat and stupid" go together like a fat horse and a stupid carriage.
This particular prejudice has played out in my life over and over. If I deal with someone (who isn't a rank misogynist) about, say, a problem with a utility bill on the phone, I'm treated like a capable and intelligent person. If I deal with someone in person, I am more likely than not going to be treated like I am immensely stupid, right down to a slow, condescending speech pattern reflective of a presumption I cannot understand any words with more than two syllables.
When I worked in an office, there were times when I spoke to clients, subcontractors, vendors, whomever, on the phone first, and was treated like a capable and intelligent person, only to have every trace of confidence that I am capable and intelligent subsequently evaporate into thin air as soon as they met me in person and discovered I am fat. They literally spoke to me like I was an entirely different person.
(Naturally, this will be an experience common not only to fat people, but people across multiple intersecting populations, who are presumed to be capable and intelligent over the phone, but not by some people after discovering they are interacting with a person of color, or a trans* person, or a person with a visible disability, as examples.)
There is, of course, no evidence that fat people as a population are any less intelligent than thin people. But the stereotype persists.
Fat people aren't a monolith. There are smart fat people, and not-so-smart fat people. There isn't much more to say besides that. If you look at a fat person, and presume zie must be stupid because you monolithize fat people into one giant lump of indistinguishable humanity, the person with the thinking problem is you.
-------------------------
Previously:
#19: All fat people hate/want to change their bodies.
#18: You can diagnose fat people's health issues by looking at them.
#17: Fat people's choices are always dictated by their fat.
#16: You are helping fat people by shaming them.
#15: Fat people hate having their pictures taken.
#14: All fat people are unhealthy.
#13: Fat people looooooooooove Twinkies!
#12: Fat people don't like/want to see media representations of themselves.
#11: No one wants to be fat.
#10: Fat people need you to intervene in their lives.
#9: Fat people don't know how they look.
#8: Fat people don't deserve anything nice.
#7: Fat people are permission slips for thin people to eat what they want.
#6: Any fat person eating a salad or exercising is trying to lose weight.
#5: Fat is axiomatically ugly.
#4: Fat people eat enormous amounts of food.
#3: Fat people are jolly/mean, and fat people are shy/loud.
#2: I can tell how someone eats all the time, because of how they eat around me.
#1: Everyone who is fat is fat for the same reason.
In The News
[Content note: Misogyny, racism, rape, rape culture, war]
Masturbating Fetuses!:
The Taliban and the U.S. announced that they will hold formal talks on finding a political solution to ending nearly 12 years of war in Afghanistan.
Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill that blocks local governments from implementing paid sick leave legislation. That seems like some real good legislation!
The whole Birther thing is back (Thanks, Congressman Jeff Duncan!), which is kind of surprising because it is stupid.
Do you need a Periodic Table of the Muppets? You do.
Also: Sesame Street has created the first Muppet to have a parent in jail. Neat!
Police arrested and detained 13 women's rights activists Thursday after anti-rape protests swelled in West Bengal, India. The protests were centered on two recent high-profile rape cases in the state.
Technical Sergeant Jaime Rodriguez was sentenced to 27 years in prison for sexually assaulting over 20 women during his 13-year tenure in the Air Force.
Alliterative news: An activist and a street artist have teamed up to beautify boarded-up buildings in Baltimore. Neat!
Seriously. Masturbating fetuses. Read this one again.
Daily Dose of Cute
Everything about that face. Everything.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Number of the Day
50%: The percentage of female astronauts in NASA's new class, "the highest percentage of female astronaut candidates ever selected by NASA."
Monday's announcement came on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride. She died last summer.Among the men joining NOAA Station Chief Christina M. Hammock, Marine Corps Major Nicole Aunapu Mann, Army Major Anne C. McClain, and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School Jessica U. Meir, Ph.D., is Navy Commander Victor J. Glover, who is African American. Given how long the iconic image of a US astronaut was/has been white and male, diversity in the program is so important. And exciting!
The eight — all in their 30s — were chosen from more than 6,000 applications received early last year, the second largest number ever received. They will report for duty in August at Johnson Space Center in Houston and join 49 astronauts currently at NASA.
...NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said these new candidates will help lead the first human mission to an asteroid in the 2020s, and then Mars, sometime in the following decade. They also may be among the first to fly to the space station aboard commercial spacecraft launched from the U.S., he noted. Russia ferries the astronauts now.
"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here — developing missions to go farther into space than ever before," Bolden said in a statement.
You can read the bios of all eight of the 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class here.
And Then This Happened
[Content Note: Misogyny; harassment; disablist language.]
So, late last month, the Women in Secularism conference got off to a rip-roaring start with an opening lecture by a male speaker (of course), Ron Lindsay, the CEO of the Center for Inquiry, who included in his address his Important Concerns about the concept of male privilege:
I am concerned the concept of privilege may be misapplied in some instances. First, some people think it has dispositive explanatory power in all situations, so, if for example, in a particular situation there are fewer women than men in a given managerial position, and intentional discrimination is ruled out, well, then privilege must be at work. But that's not true; there may be other explanations. The concept of privilege can do some explanatory work at a general level, but in particular, individualized situations, other factors may be more significant. To bring this point home let's consider an example of another broad generalization which is unquestionably true, namely that people with college degrees earn more over their lifetime than those who have only high school diplomas. As I said, as a general matter, this is unquestionably true as statistics have shown this to be the case. Nonetheless in any particular case, when comparing two individuals, one with a high school degree and one with a college degree, the generalization may not hold.This was such a typical, tiresome, garbage lecture from a secular dude, who has yet to learn the basic principle of communication that if you're talking (i.e. not shutting up) then you aren't listening, and who doesn't believe women are experts on our own lived experiences (!!!), that it would hardly merit comment, except for the entirely predictable fall-out that followed when women rightly objected.
But it's the second misapplication of the concept of privilege that troubles me most. I'm talking about the situation where the concept of privilege is used to try to silence others, as a justification for saying, "shut up and listen." Shut up, because you're a man and you cannot possibly know what it's like to experience x, y, and z, and anything you say is bound to be mistaken in some way, but, of course, you're too blinded by your privilege even to realize that.
This approach doesn't work. It certainly doesn't work for me.
...By the way, with respect to the "Shut up and listen" meme, I hope it's clear that it's the "shut up" part that troubles me, not the "listen" part. Listening is good. People do have different life experiences, and many women have had experiences and perspectives from which men can and should learn. But having had certain experiences does not automatically turn one into an authority to whom others must defer. Listen, listen carefully, but where appropriate, question and engage.
Harassment. Threats. Harassment. Threats. Non-apologies. Harassment. Threats. Condescending lectures. Harassment. Threats. Etc.
Rebecca Watson details everything here, including the response from the Center for Inquiry Board of Directors, after "dozens of letters (including one signed by the majority of Women in Secularism speakers) were sent to the Center for Inquiry's Board of Directors, begging them to do something to restore CFI's reputation as a humanist organization that cares about women and their ongoing harassment." The response, in its entirety:
Center for Inquiry Board of Directors Statement on the CEO and the Women in Secularism 2 ConferenceOh. They're "unhappy with the controversy." Not unhappy with their CEO being a condescending, mansplaining annoyfuck who scolds women who ask men to examine their privilege, but with "the controversy," which was caused by women who took issue with their CEO being a condescending, mansplaining annoyfuck who scolded them in the opening address of a conference called "Women in Secularism." PERFECT.
The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.
The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women's issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.
CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. We appreciate the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us. Going forward, we will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to enhance our common values and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and respect for women around the world.
Why this female atheist isn't a part of movement atheism, part one million and twelve.
TV Corner: Defiance
Is anyone else watching the series Defiance, which is in its first season on Syfy? Iain and I have been watching it, and, although it's still finding its stride, it's compelling enough that we've kept watching it. The basic premise is the struggle for post-apocalyptic survival in a town called Defiance (formerly St. Louis) after Earth has been terraformed and humans and aliens are living together, or trying to. Within the town, there are power struggles and various intrigues, set against the backdrop of pressure from a meddling federal alliance and some larger nefarious plot being orchestrated by people presumed to be allies to the leaders in Defiance.
There are a couple recognizable faces from Lost (Fionnula Flanagan and Grant Bowler) and a couple from Dexter (Julie Benz and Jaime Murray), as well as Gale Harold from the US Queer as Folk and Graham Greene, who's been in a million things.
The show references/borrows pieces from Star Wars (especially in its basically-a-Western style), Battlestar Galactica, and Dr. Who, among others, but it has its own aesthetic, which is coming more clearly into focus as the first season continues.
It's got a pretty typical structure for similar series, in that there's a long plot arc, but each episode contains its own mini-drama which gets resolved by the end of the episode (usually). The balance between the long and short arcs feels off to me at this point; that's definitely the weak point of the show for me. And there are a lot of characters to keep up with, which is probably part of the problem in achieving a good story balance. Among those many characters, however, are a lot of interesting female characters, and it passes the Bechdel Test all over the place.
Anyway. Anyone else watching and want to talk about it? Since I left out spoilers for the main page post, please be sure to mark spoilers in comments, so anyone who wants to skip them can.
Also: Anyone playing the video game?
Santorum 4 Prez
Rick Santorum still wants to be president. Of the country. Despite the fact he couldn't get elected president of his local Moose Lodge. Which probably don't even have presidents. But it wouldn't stop Rick Santorum from running. And he'd still lose. To anyone else. Anyway.
Almost everybody has written off Rick Santorum as a 2016 contender — everybody, that is, except Rick Santorum.That message? That his party has been taken over by elites from "big East Coast cities" who don't understand that the Republican Party needs to appeal to people in working class towns. Which I have to admit is pretty smart. Since the Republican Party has never tried pandering to the white working class before. *that face*
Behind the scenes, the former Pennsylvania senator is quietly preparing for another presidential run. Trips to Iowa are in the works, he's meeting daily with his advisers, and he's already fine-tuning his message for the early primaries.
"I've always thought that the Republican party can do well with the middle of America, with people that work hard and have a family," he says.This fucking guy. What a thinker! No one in the Republican Party has ever devised such a cunning strategy as to sneer at big city elites and appeal to "middle America" with race-baiting, homophobic, Christian supremacist dogwhistles about "people who work hard and have a family." How does this genius come up with this stuff?!
Back in December, [Santorum's longtime strategist, John Brabender] hosted a Christmas party in Northern Virginia for Santorum's inner circle that served as a reunion — and as an informal strategy session. Over drinks at the River Creek Club in Leesburg, Va., the senator's friends and allies debated the pros and cons of another run.Well, listen, when your friends whom you pay to work for you on political campaigns decide that you've got to run for president, then you've got to run for president. Taking the career advice of friends who call you "the boss" because you are literally their boss is just solid decision-making.
By midnight, the consensus was clear: "The boss," as his friends call him, should jump into the 2016 race, if at all possible.
For now, Santorum's nonprofit organization, Patriot Voices, is his chief vehicle for staying in play. He's working to develop the group into a film and educational outfit that informs voters about issues he considers important.I don't know about y'all, but I can't WAIT to see Masturbating Fetuses: A Patriot Voices Production. Starring Rick Santorum as Dr. Coolio Stethoscope. Who is not just a doctor, but also THE PRESIDENT OF AMERICA.
[H/T to Jordan.]
Good Morning! Or Whatever! Here's a New One!
[Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
Texas Congressman Michael Burgess, who is a Republican (she wrote, as if you couldn't guess, ha ha), supports a national law banning all abortions after 15 weeks and says that masturbating fetuses are the PROOF. Look it up—it's SCIENCE. (No, it's not.)
"Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful," said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. "They stroke their face. If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?"Perfect. I mean, that is just a perfect argument. Case closed, your honor!
The legislation currently under consideration in the House seeks to ban abortions after 20 weeks, on the discredited premise that fetuses feel pain after 20 weeks.
"Well, I think all the members are cognizant of the fact that this is not a Congress that cares much about science," said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Rules Committee's ranking member.And that about sums it up.
Question of the Day
What is your earliest memory of positive interaction with an animal?
(By which I mean a non-human animal.)
My earliest memory full-stop is crawling behind my parents' couch after the white cat they had when I was born. In fact, my first word was "cat."
I also have very early memories of feeding and petting our neighbors' horse, Todie. I remember one time he bit my finger (accidentally, of course), and I tried so hard not to cry, because I was afraid if my mom knew he'd hurt me, I wouldn't be able to see him anymore.
Yes, that's my wee diaper-sagged ass feeding carrots to Todie. I was about thirteen months old in that photo, which was taken the summer of 1975. My mom and I used to walk down to the pasture, which was maybe 100 yards from our house, and it always seemed like the longest walk in the world, because I couldn't wait to see Todie, and his small companion pony Princess.
[Originally posted October 12, 2011.]
2FA, #20
![comic strip in which Liss & Deeky are having the following conversation: Deeky: Ever watch Shipping Wars? Liss: No. What channel? Deeky: Arts & Entertainment. Obvs. It's hilarious. Everyone's always talking about loads. Liss: Found it. [seven minutes passes] After seven minutes of this, I'd never trust any of these bozos to ship my turds down the toilet. Deeky: LOL! Right?](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/2FA/2FA20.jpg)
From an actual text conversation this weekend. Which, for the record, ended with my saying, "I am angry this show exists," to which Deeky replied, "LOLOLOL my work here is done."
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Racist imagery; Christian supremacy.]
"I know you are hearing a lot recently about whether or not these 11 million individuals become legal, that these are 11 million voters that automatically vote for a democrat or a liberal. Don't drink the Koolaid! How do I know that? Because 7 out of 10 individuals that come to Christ, that have a religious conversion experience to Christianity in America today, are of Hispanic descent. …We have to put some salsa sauce on the top of the conservative movement!"—Sam Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to the Majority Conference" this weekend.
Runner-up quote, care of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, at the same conference: "There is a war on Christianity, not just from liberal elites here at home, but worldwide." Okay, player.
Honorable mention goes to Jeb Bush: "Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity."
That sounds like quite a conference!
On Patton Oswalt's "Rape Joke Epiphany"
[Content Note: Rape culture; rape-related "humor."]
Everyone in the multiverse (and thanks to each and every one of you) has emailed me about comedian Patton Oswalt's "reversal" on rape jokes, which he published Friday, buried at the end of a long post about professional thievery, heckling, and rape jokes. Because the subject of rape jokes is one on which I've spilled a lot of digital ink, a lot of people are quite reasonably wondering what I think about it.
Well, I have a few thoughts.
I'm relieved—for all the reasons that have been well-documented in this space—that there is a popular comedian who (ostensibly) won't be telling rape jokes anymore. At least not ones that make survivors a punchline.
What follows will inevitably be interpreted, by those inclined to take it that way, as the insufficient gratitude of an angry feminist who is never satisfied, which I cannot control. But Oswalt says he is listening, and I see no reason not to take him at his word and offer my criticism.
Because there is a big hole in the middle of his piece—a big hole where no acknowledgment of the rape jokes he has told and an apology for those harmful jokes should be. If he now understands, as is his assertion, the harm caused by the telling of rape jokes that normalize rape and potentially trigger survivors, surely a meaningful reversal must include accountability.
He talks about Daniel Tosh's rape joke, and his reactions to it, and his defenses of rape jokes. But he does not say, straightforwardly, "I told rape jokes. And I am sorry I did that, now that I see the harm that they cause." Instead, he merely offers, "I'm a man. I get to be wrong. And I get to change."
And there is some bit of dishonesty in his claims that he never really got it until now, because at the end of an extended sequence in Comedians of Comedy, in which he assumes the persona of a murderer and rapist, talking to the camera/audience as if to his victim, he falls out of character and says, "Please cut the camera off. I just creeped myself out." It isn't that Patton Oswalt wasn't familiar with the rape culture previous to this moment: He was, like all privileged men, intimately familiar with its tropes and narratives. It's just that he was acting as a purveyor and defender of the rape culture. He was able to identify with rapists, but not survivors.
There is no neutral in the rape culture.
To this point, he was not merely insensitive out of ignorance; he was an agent of the rape culture who told jokes upholding that culture and who tried to discredit critics using well-worn tactics deployed by defenders of the rape culture. He says he was doing it as a comic—"This was about censorship, and the limits of comedy, and the freedom to create and fuck up while you hone what you create."—but, irrespective of the motivations and context of his deployment of silencing strategies, he was effectively (if not intentionally) doing it as a useful tool of the rape culture.
More is owed than "whoops."
I am a survivor of rape, and I have held myself accountable for perpetuating the rape culture: "I have done it. I have perpetuated the rape culture. We have all done it. We were born into it, and we were all socialized to have contempt for consent." One of many examples.
There is no shame in acknowledging we have expressed hostility for consent in one way or another. This is how trust is restored and maintained.
But Oswalt never quite gets there.
And while I certainly appreciate that Oswalt has has some change of heart and mind, this is A Big Problem:
There is a collective consciousness that can detect the presence (and approach) of something good or bad, in society or the world, before any hard "evidence" exists. It's happening now with the concept of "rape culture." Which, by the way, isn't a concept. It's a reality. I'm just not the one who's going to bring it into focus. But I've read enough viewpoints, and spoken to enough of my female friends (comedians and non-comedians) to know it isn't some vaporous hysteria, some false meme or convenient catch-phrase.There is only no evidence of the rape culture if one discredits the lived experience of millions and millions of women (and men) who experience the prolific manifestations of the rape culture every goddamn day of our lives. Not to put too fine a point on it, but only in rape cases are victims of the crime not considered reliable eyewitnesses to their own victimization. Discrediting women as unreliable narrators, setting aside "evidence" as something that only Totally Objective Arbiters (ahem) can assess after filtering information through their Validity Prisms, is a key tool of the rape culture.
I realize Oswalt set "evidence" in scare quotes, but he follows it immediately by a reassurance that he has Objectively Determined After Speaking to Women that the rape culture isn't "some vaporous hysteria, some false meme or convenient catch-phrase." As opposed to, I dunno, all the other stuff feminists whinge about. Like the rape culture. Until he decided it wasn't.
Two of the most crucial means by which the rape culture will be dismantled are: Accountability and empowering all women (not just the Exceptional Women in one's life) as credible reporters on our lived experiences. I wish I had seen some trace of each in this well-circulated epiphany.
No cookies today, I'm afraid.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by catnip.
Recommended Reading:
Declan: NSA Spying Flap Extends to Contents of U.S. Phone Calls [Via Susie.]
Ian: Al Gore: NSA Surveillance Programs Violate the Constitution
Grace: When Dudebros Protest Too Much [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of racism and misogyny.]
Dr. Kamela Heyward-Rotimi reviews Sikivu Hutchinson's Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels.
Janet: Not All Memoirs Are Created Equal: The Gatekeeping of Trans Women of Color's Stories [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of transmisogyny and abuse. Via Trudy.]
Maya: Cool Street Art Alert: "Women do not owe you their time or conversation."
Kyler: Children's Museum Demands Apology for Outcry Over Telling Gay Couple They're Not a Family [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of homophobia and victim-blaming.]
Nicole: The Self Care Corner: Intentional Boredom
Finally: Yesterday, Pam Spaulding posted yesterday that she's shuttering Pam's House Blend after nine years. I met Pam back when we were just blog commenters, before either of us started our own blogs months apart in 2004. She was an early confidante and ally, and there were a lot of times, early in the beginnings of this space, that it would have been difficult to keep going without her support and friendship. We started the now-defunct Big Brass Blog together; we gave each other technical and design help (Pam gave me crucial assistance in basic HTML; I didn't even know how to code a link when I started); and, although we both got busy with building our own individual spaces, I still read PHB every day, and Pam Spaulding will always be my original bloggrrl. I am in awe of the work she has done at Pam's House Blend, and all the contributions she's made to advancing LGBT rights and making sure marginalized voices are part of the nation's political conversation.
All the cheers for Pam Spaulding. ♥
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