What word or phrase did you misunderstand as a child or even as an adult?
We've done this one before, but I was reminded this morning by Shaker Mary Moylan that, when I was a kid, I thought the idiom "going to hell in a hand basket" was "going to hell in a ham basket." I wondered for years WTF a ham basket was.
Question of the Day
We're Thinking...Beige
According to Rolling Stone, Fox News chief Roger Ailes is so afraid of "those gays" that he made sure his corner office had extra security features to protect himself.
Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having "bombproof glass" installed in the windows - even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. "They'll be down there protesting," Ailes said. "Those gays."What is he so afraid of; that a band of gay terrorists are going to sneak into the place and redecorate it?
HT to TPM.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Film Corner!
Know what's even worse than an insufferable dudebro comedy that objectifies women and treats having sex with them as a trophy for being a Nice Guy…? An insufferable Christian dudebro comedy that objectifies women and treats having sex with them as a trophy for being a Nice Guy. With what appears to be a budget of five bucks.
This, Shakers, is a real thing in the world:
It's all a big party set to "You Can't Hurry Love" as our protagonist, Jack, high-fives his office mates at CubicleCorp, and says, while lounging in his desk chair looking self-satisfied, "Do you realize what I've achieved?" Onscreen text informs us: "Jack saved himself for marriage." Back to the montage of Jack fist-bumping and dancing with his coworkers, because that's obviously something coworkers do. He says, in voiceover, "Only three percent of Americans have accomplished what I've done."
What—don't you and your coworkers keep tabs on what percentage of Americans do and do not have sex before marriage? You and your coworkers are so weird. They've got Excel spreadsheets for that shit at CubicleCorp. True fact.
Jack's sassy female coworker—who, because this is a Christian dudebro comedy for affluent white people, obviously cannot be black or gay and thus is the white conservative Christian equivalent: a white woman who is middle-aged and thus axiomatically meant to be read as unattractive and thus unfuckable—peeks around the border of her cubicle to quip, "And three percent of accountants haven't even kissed a girl!" I guess this is what passes for a "joke" among abstinence-promoting white conservative Christians.
Onscreen text informs us Jack "can't wait for the wedding night." He looks at himself in his dresser mirror and says, in what I think is supposed to be a movie voiceover voice, "He remains a virgin no longer." And then does some other dumb shit, like makes muscles at himself and recreates an iconic scene from The Karate Kid substituting "clothes on, clothes off" for "wax on, wax off." He also sings "Let's get biblical!" to the tune of Olivia Newton-John's 80's
Hey, makers of Christian cinema—you realize that inserting allusions to heathen films and songs in your pictures might make people seek out those films and songs, or remember them, and realize that they are SO MUCH BETTER, right? (P.S. Awesomely current references.) Anyway.
Onscreen text: "But on his wedding day…" This is followed by a scene of Jack being left at the altar. Onscreen text: "Jack is going to play…" Jack watches his bride depart with another dude, possibly one who isn't treating her virginity like a door prize, and says to his friend to the sound of a deflating erection, "I'm not going to do it tonight, am I?" Onscreen text: "The Waiting Game."
That is the game Jack is playing, and it is also the name of this shitty, shitty film.
Some more things happen. Jack—who is a GREAT ACTOR, by the way—goes all rebel sex fiend and complains to his friend, "I'm so frustrated. You know, I'm just going to do what I want to do anyway. It's not like it's going to wind up on the front page of the newspaper." But wait! Noted sex scandalist Ted Haggard is at the next table! He leans over and says, "Hey, buddy—I wouldn't do that if I were you." HA HA! Way to make lemonade out of snorting meth off a lemon's ass, Reverend Cameo.
Jack tells his friend about a series of terrible dates while they play Wii. Obviously he cannot fall in love with a woman who has hairy toes, or sings off-key, or doesn't act Christian in the One Right Way to Be Christian, of which Jack is the arbiter no doy. WHY WON'T GOD SEND HIM A PERFECT WOMAN TO FUCK?! DOESN'T HE DESERVE AT LEAST THAT—A PHYSICALLY PERFECT WOMAN TO BE HIS WIFE FOR ALL ETERNITY?! GOD!!!
Are you there, God? It's me, Jack.
Hang on a second! Jack bumps into a girl he knew from school. She is also a great actor, FYI. Montage of Jack falling for her and trying to make out with her, while she remains totally oblivious. Not like her attention matters: God has matchmade this perfect match for Jack, to reward him for not having sex with any other ladies, so her will is obviously totes irrelevant.
Montage of stupid garbage scenes, set to some barfy Christian music.
Also some awesome jokes, like two dudes hugging, and HEY YOU DON'T HAVE TO WAVE YOUR WII CONTROLLER AROUND SO WILDLY IF YOU'RE PLAYING CHESS! Jack, you scamp.
Onscreen text: "Abstinence never felt so good. TheWaitingGameMovie.com." Sure.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please refrain from making comments that treat being sexually active as "normal," or, conversely, being sexual abstinent for any reason as "abnormal." The topic of the post is not individual choices or orientations regarding sexuality. On-topic discussion for this post is how a specific flavor of Christianity, and, by extension, this film, treats women's virginity as (literally) God's gift to men who remain "virtuous" by practicing abstinence until marriage. Also on-topic: How much ass this movie sucks. H/T to Deeks.]
Update on Manal al-Sharif and #women2drive
by Shaker Moderator Aphra_Behn
[Trigger warning for misogyny, religious oppression, violence.]
Last week, I wrote about Manal al-Sharif, the Saudi IT specialist who was jailed for driving herself, and then uploading the video to YouTube. (You can watch a CNN story about the case here.
I'm very happy to report that, following a petition to King Abdullah, she has been freed and reunited with her 5 year-old son. She has signed a pledge to abandon the driving campaign, a pledge that, according to friend and fellow activist Wajeha al-Huwaider, was almost certainly a condition of release. Ms. al-Huwaider noted: "I am sure they told her we shouldn't continue with this issue. They told me that and the message was clear to me. I am sure for her it was even stronger."
It's unclear what will happen with the women#2drive campaign. Ms al-Huwaider said the fight will continue, "but in different ways." It's clear the issue isn't going away anytime soon, and it's also clear how laughably false the early reports were that Ms. al-Sharif had broken down in prison, repented of driving, and stated: "I advise girls of my generation to rally behind our leadership and Ulema. They know better than us about our condition. " And if you believe that, I have this awesome bridge to sell you. (Not surprisingly, her lawyer refuted the account.)
According to blogger Aseen Usmani, other, equally false rumors swirled around the country as Ms. al-Sharif waited in prison:
Many of those opposing women driving claim that it is a Zionist/Western/ Iranian/Shia conspiracy to disrupt Saudi society and corrupt the morals and honour of Saudi women. It is also said that any woman who speaks out for lifting the ban is not a pure Saudi but rather a woman who is nontribal or an immigrant, because "no pure Saudi woman wants to drive."
It speaks to how serious the problem is when the opposition simply cannot conceive that that many Saudi women have independently become frustrated at being unable to drive themselves. It speaks to how deep the prejudice runs when it is easier to believe in a foreign conspiracy than in mothers who want to take their children to the hospital, professionals who want to drive themselves to work, and students who want to transport themselves to university. It speaks to male leaders who are profoundly out of touch with the realities of women's lives when a cleric propses that women share breastmilk with their drivers (and co-workers) as a "solution" to the problem of women being alone with an unrelated man. (Breastfeeding children has long conveyed a familial relation in Islam, allowing men to interact with the milk-mother as if she were a close female relative.) Such suggestions aren't mainstream, for obvious reasons, but as the fabulous blogger Saudiwoman points out, the fact that this is even a topic of debate speaks volumes about the way that male clerics are not paying attention to women's realities:
The whole issue just shows how clueless men are. All this back and forth between sheikhs and not one bothers to ask a woman if it is logical, let alone possible to breastfeed a grown man five fulfilling breastmilk meals. As I’m writing this, I’m cringing at just the thought of it... Breastfeeding a baby is hard work and it takes a toll to be able to produce enough for a one year old, I can't even imagine how much a thirty year old would need. Women do not produce breastmilk on demand.
(I highly recommend her entire blog. Her reporting and analysis have been absolutely invaluable as an English-language source for Ms. Al-Sharif's case.)
Additionally, the reaction of some conservative religious leaders to the issue of women driving continues to be very negative. According to news reports, prominent cleric Abdel-Rahman al-Barak has said that women who drive in defiance of the ban are "opening (the doors) of evil." He elaborated: "they will die, God willing, and will not enjoy this." (More background on al-Barak and his resistance to change can be found here.) Although he is not a government official, he is described as a highly influential leader of the most conservative clerics, whose support the government needs. Of course, there are other clerics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who disagree , and women may legally drive throughout the rest of the Muslim world. It remains to be seen if Saudi conservatives will continue to win this argument, as they have for decades, or if times really are changing.
I don't pretend any expertise in Saudi politics, but those who do suggest that this is a potentially volatile period in which the Saudi government is actively working to counter the regional revolutions which are undoing the old alliance of "moderate" Arab states, and threatening to strengthen the position of Iran. What does this mean for #Women2drive?
Pessimistically, it could mean the end of the campaign. More optimistically, it could also mean that the government will seek a face-saving way to implement women's driving, if it were seen to strengthen the country internally. Writing an editorial in the Arab News, Ms. Tala Al-Hejilan makes this point, stressing that, while Saudis are not threatening mass protests, the legalization of women's driving would lead to a more peaceful and productive society. It would, she notes, lessen the number of foreigners (supporting a campaign for Saudization) by reducing the number of foreign drivers in the country, would help families save money, and increase the productivity of Saudi workplaces.
However things go, Ms. al-Sharif's official statement (English translation thanks to Zaki Safar) upon release was clearly designed to be non-inflammatory. While she may have personally abandoned the cause, she nowhere states that women driving is undesirable:
Concerning the topic of women's driving, I will leave it up to our Leader in whose discretion I entirely trust, to weigh the pros and cons and reach a decision that will take into consideration the best interests of the People, while also being pleasing to Allah, and in line with Divine Law.
Again, I'm not an expert, but it strikes me this is not an abandonment of her cause, but merely a politic relocation of it within a conservative discourse emphasizing respect for authority. Ms. al-Sharif also answers her critics, stating:
…never in my life had I been anything beside a Muslim, Saudi woman who aspires to remain in God's good graces and to safeguard the reputation of our beloved country....I was stunned to learn of the accusations hurled at my religious and moral beliefs especially that they originated from individuals I least expected to go down that route. I held my breath for those speaking in the name of religion and others-May Allah guide them rightly-to do me some justice, and that if I had done wrong to blame me only accordingly and fairly, without defaming my faith, creed, and moral system. For at the end of the day I'm everyone's sister and daughter. Yet how could they wound their sister and daughter with such charges?
Positioning herself as a sister and daughter, and specifying that she is not a foreign agent nor a non-Muslim woman, seem to me very carefully chosen words that emphasize this campaign is truly coming from the ground up.
For her actions, Ms. al-Sharif could have lost custody of her son, her job, and her freedom. For her own safety and the good of the cause, it seems that she will now choose to take the back seat (so to speak) in the #women2drive campaign. It's not clear what will happen next, but it is clear, from Facebook and Twitter, that Saudi women are not giving up on driving anytime soon. I've been reading women's accounts of learning to drive, right now, and it's clear that some, at least, are hoping for rapid action. I frankly admire the courage and enthusiasm these women express in the face of so much criticism and danger. One commenter in a pro-driving Facebook group even suggested a motto for the campaign: "Yalla (Let's go!)... drive!"
Yalla, indeed.
Note: While I was writing, this went up. It's pretty much the most recent English-language roundup of media relating to the case, including a subtitled version of Ms. al-Sharif's original video. Definitely give it a look if you're interested in this case.
It's Raining Letters!
Dear Donna Rose,
"Disciplined structure"?!?
What the hell?
We should talk. Or perhaps not.
Katie
Via
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for Islamophobia.]
"If you oppose Muslims, well, what is said? Well, you're a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots?"—Pat Robertson, professional dipfuck.
Who, by the way, would be the first person to scream bloody hell if someone implied that all Christians are an ideological monolith.
Because he doesn't want to get lumped in with heretics who ordain women or accept gay people, no doy.
I Write Letters
[Trigger warning for violence.]
Dear President Obama:
Today marks two years since Dr. George Tiller, a reproductive rights advocate and one of the precious few physicians in the country who performed lifesaving late-term abortions, was murdered at his church.
The day after his murder, I wrote you a letter, begging you to "stop relying on dangerously dishonest rhetoric about abortion, its supporters, and its opponents," and to stop drawing an equivalency between the pro-choice and "pro-life" positions, as if both sides have an equally valid point, and as if activists who defend reproductive rights and activists who seek to subvert them are somehow two sides of the same coin.
Since that time, the Republican Party has, on both the state and federal levels, endeavored to undermine access to abortion, to contraception, and even to woman-centered healthcare providers. More than 500 pieces of anti-choice legislation have been introduced across the nation so far this year, at least one in every single state legislature. More than half of the state legislatures are considering restrictions on private health insurance plans to disallow them from paying for abortions. At least one state legislator has suggested that women should have to bear the cost of a separate insurance policy in case of needing an abortion in the event of being raped.
All of this has been done under the auspices of "valuing life," despite the fact that forcing a woman to carry to term an unwanted or unviable pregnancy against her will is the opposite of a respect for life, if the definition of "life" is to have any meaning at all.
Last week, a man was arrested in Madison with a plan "to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies." That didn't happen in a void. That happened in a political climate in which it is considered an acceptable position to value a blastocyst over a living, breathing, sentient, existent human being.
It happened in a country in which every state legislature, and the national Congress, are trying to find ways to limit access to abortion—and in which the ostensibly pro-choice president remains silent on that matter. Except, of course, when he's bragging about ceding ground to anti-choicers to pass legislation, while insisting it's "not an abortion bill."
It happened in a country in which we are expected to trade everything away, including our civil liberties, in exchange for protection from the existential threat of nebulous foreign terrorists, but in which one of the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaigns in America, its co-ordination and orchestration frequently done right out in the open—at meetings, on websites, in email alerts—and potentially affecting the lives of more than half the population, is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.
Mr. President, the vicious murder of Dr. Tiller was an act of terrorism committed by a terrorist. It should have been a wake-up call to this nation, and to you, to acknowledge the ugly reality that the anti-choice movement is a serious domestic threat.
Instead, the anti-choice movement has gained momentum with the unilateral support of the Republican Party, turning what was once a radical fringe movement into nothing less than state-sponsored terrorism, in defense of an inherently violent ideology.
And in response to this onslaught of violently misogynist activity by people who seek to rob people with uteri of their agency, their bodily autonomy, their right of self-determination, their access to a legal medical procedure, their ability to do that most basic of life management in the modern world—control their reproduction—your party has been all but silent.
You, Mr. President, have been silent.
Two years ago, I told you I was crying because I was sad and scared and angry. Today, sir, I cry because you have allowed Dr. Tiller's murder to happen in vain.
With colossal contempt,
Melissa McEwan
An Open Letter to Secretary Clinton
[Trigger warning for homophobia and violence]
Madame Secretary,
As you are undoubtedly aware, on Saturday, May 28, Moscow police stood idly by as protesters attacked participants in Moscow's pride parade. Following the attack, [TW] police arrested several victims of the attack, including at least two Americans.
Just prior to the parade, Russian authorities revoked parade organizers' permit. Irrespective of the veracity rumors of police officers' participation in the beatings, this last minute withdrawal clearly set the stage for this year's parade to become the scene of violence, as has been the case in past years.
While I know you're busy, I ask you to indulge a personal tangent.
Ten years ago this March, my partner and I went on our first date. We spent a week traveling throughout Estonia and Latvia (how this came to be our first date is a somewhat longer story). It was truly a magical experience, and we both cherish our memories of holding each other close while we explored Riga's streets as winter sighed its last gasp.
Over the past ten years, our lives have changed. Seemingly ages ago, I came out as a transsexual woman. My partner and I are a very happy openly queer couple. We can't go back to Riga. We fear that even in flusher times, we won't be able to show our daughter the countryside from whence her ancestors fled war and poverty for life in the United States.
All that has changed in the last ten years is that my family no longer fits the narrow image that reactionary forces are willing to accept. This, and this alone, is enough to expose us to the threat of state-sanctioned violence.
Latvia is very proudly not Russia, and this is not about tourism.
There are people throughout Russia and throughout the world who are living in fear because of their governments' distaste of their gender or sexuality. Some of these people are American citizens, such as those beaten and arrested this past weekend.
I understand the importance and delicacy of America's relationship with the Russian government. However, I also understand the importance of our relationship with the Russian people-- all of them.
I ask you to condemn the Russian government for its hateful, violent actions, and to reaffirm the United States' commitment to human rights.
Yours,
Kate Forbes
Syracuse, NY
[Crossposted]
Of the People, By the People, For the People...
Obama to name former CEO Bryson as Commerce secretary. Of course he will.
President Barack Obama will name former Edison International chief executive John Bryson on Tuesday to be the new U.S. Commerce secretary, filling an important trade job with a seasoned businessman.Bryson, who also sits on the board of Boeing, will replace Gary Locke, who is replacing Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China.
"Mr. Bryson will play a key role as a member of the president's economic team, bringing decades of knowledge and experience in the public and private sectors, and will provide valuable ideas and initiatives to strengthen America's competitiveness around the world," a White House official said.Have I mentioned lately that I'm sooooo glad we elected a Democrat to the White House...?
"Mr. Bryson will continue the (Commerce) Department's mission to drive U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace, strengthen the international economic position of the United States and facilitate global trade by opening up new markets for U.S. goods and services."
Bryson's appointment continues a White House trend of nominating senior business executives to top government posts.
You know, once upon a time, the government of this nation, irrespective of which party was in charge, considered there to be valuable expertise in other areas besides Corporate America.
Two Facts
1. David Brooks is still inexplicably being paid to write nonsensical and incomprehensible garbage columns for the New York Times.
2. This column smells like barf.
I will give Brooks credit for one thing: It is indubitably impressive that he manages to fit no fewer than 10,000 stupid ideas into 800 words.
Among those many stupid ideas, perhaps the stupidest is the one with which he begins his Ode to Kids These Days:
Over the past few weeks, America's colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.Maybe it's just because most of the people I happen to know don't have PhDs in undiluted privilege like Professor Brooks, and maybe it's because people with marginalized identities and bodies tend to spend lots of their adult lives struggling to attain (and maintain) a sense of self-worth in a world that continually communicates to them that they are less than, and maybe it's because reaching some peace within oneself, despite the cultural narratives encouraging discontent, is so hard-won that its value is priceless, but I just don't know a whole lot of folks, even "sensible" ones, ahem, who would trade away their current lives for another chance at being 22 again.
I'm So Glad We Elected a Democrat, Part One Billion and Four
David Dayen catches Jared Bernstein, former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden, making an astonishing admission:
There will be no WPA-type programs in our near future. There was no appetite for them in the Obama admin in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression and there's a lot less now. The reasons for that are interesting and I'll speak to them another day. But it ain't happening.It's astonishing not because it's a surprise that the Obama administration has no interest in, as Paul Krugman suggests, instituting "WPA-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads, which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt"—nothing could be less surprising than Obama's disinterest in progressive economic policy—but because it's astonishing to see a former administration official confirm that lack of disinterest so bluntly.
D-Day underlines this point:
[O]n a WPA program, Bernstein explicitly says it was the White House, not Republicans, who had no appetite for direct, public job creation during the first term. Bernstein says he made the arguments about public works jobs inside the White House, but he was clearly outvoted. He doesn't give the arguments made in response, tantalizingly alluding to "interesting" reasons that he will "speak to another day." But he says very clearly that the reason we did all of this hoops-jumping and nudging in the stimulus package rather than just paying people to work at jobs that needed to be done was a philosophical decision inside the White House. In a sense we already knew this, but it's important that a former White House insider re-emphasized it.If "there is no appetite" for the kind of economic policy that actually makes meaningful differences in the lives of USians (by which I mean actual people, not the corporations granted personhood by our contemptible Supreme Court) even in the White House of a Democrat (no less one who promised "hope" and "change"), we are in real trouble.
That is to say: We are in real trouble.
Question of the Day
What's for dinner?
(Or, whatever meal you're due to eat next in your part of the world.)
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Lissie's Delicious Hot German Potato Salad.
Recommended Reading:
Michelle: [TW for discussion of body image] Pictures of You
sheridf: [TW for medical malfeasance; fatphobia; violence] These Days I Hate Going to the Gynecologist
Echidne: Smiling Guys Finish Last
Andy: Report: More Countries Supporting Gays and Lesbians
Tigtog: @mfarnsworth on Blanchett
Steve: Pawlenty Should Rethink the "Doofus" Line
Leave your links in comments...
Quote of the Day
"Yes, I think [I could have beaten President Barack Obama in the 2012 election]. I mean, no one can know."—Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R-Everberatingthunderfuck), on ABC's "This Week" over the weekend.
Oh, Mitch, you're so humble. No one can know—but I'm pretty sure I would've won!
Do shut up.
The Parade
This post originally appeared on May 25, 2009.
I grew up in Perrysburg, Ohio. It's a small town, a suburb of Toledo, and when I was a kid in the 1950's and '60's, it fit all of the images that small towns in the Midwest have: tree-shaded streets, neat homes, lots of churches, and a main street -- Louisiana Avenue -- with little shops like the drug store with the fountain, the dime store, the barber shop, the hardware store, the bakery with the smell of bread baking and the sweet scent of icing, and the bank with the solid stone exterior. They're all still there, just under different names now, and my parents, who still live there, still call the drug store by its old name, even though it's changed owners and become a jewelry shop. In the winter the Christmas decorations line the street, and each Memorial Day there is a parade that starts at the Schaller Memorial, the veterans hall, and proceeds up Louisiana Avenue, taking a turn when it reaches the Oliver Hazard Perry Memorial ("We have met the enemy and they are ours...") and marches down West Front Street past the old Victorian homes that overlook the Maumee River.
When I was a kid the parade was made up of the veterans groups like the American Legion and the VFW, and platoons of soldiers and veterans, including, through the 1970's, the last remaining veterans of World War I. They wore their uniforms and their medals, and those that couldn't march sat in the back seat of convertibles, waving slowly to the crowds that lined the sidewalks. They were followed by the marching band from the high school, the color guard, the Cub Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the drum and bugle corps, floats from church groups, all of the city fire equipment, antique cars, and the service groups like the Shriners, the Elks, and the Kiwanis Club. After the last float came all the kids on their bicycles decorated with streamers, bunting, flags, and all the patriotic paperwork we could muster. My friends and I would try to outdo each other, and it had less to do with patriotism than it did with seeing how many rolls of red, white, and blue crepe paper we could thread in between the spokes of our wheels.
I was about ten or so on one Memorial Day when I spent a lot of time getting my Schwinn Racer ready for the big parade. It was a perfect day; the sky was a sparkling spring blue and all the floats, cars, and fire trucks were gleaming in the sun as the parade organized on Indiana Avenue in front of the Memorial Hall. The high school band in their yellow and black uniforms marched in precision as the major led off with a Sousa tune, and as the parade slowly made its way down the avenue we could see the crowds along the sidewalks waiting and waving. As we waited our turn we wheeled our bikes in circles, just like the Shriners in their little go-karts, and finally we got the signal that it was time for the kids to roll. There was an organized rush to lead off, and then we were slowly pedaling down the street, waving to everybody outside the library, the Chevy dealership, even the people lined up on the roof of the pizza parlor. I looked for my dad shooting movies with the 8mm camera, but didn't see him. Oh, well, it didn't matter; we were supposed to meet at the home of friends who were hosting a post-parade picnic in their backyard. Their house was at the end of the parade route, so that was the perfect place to pull out of the parade and have the first of many Faygo Redpops that summer.
But for some reason I stayed with the parade, on down West Front, and then up West Boundary and past the gates of Fort Meigs Cemetery. The floats and the fire trucks were gone, but what was left of the parade -- the color guard and the veterans -- went through the gates and along the path. There was no music now, just a solemn drumbeat keeping a steady muffled tapping. The color guard turned at a small stone memorial, and then past it to a gravesite where a family was gathered; a mother in a black dress, a father in a grey suit, and a teenage son and daughter, looking somber and out of place. The grave was still fresh, the dirt mounded over, the headstone a simple marker with a flag. A minister spoke some words, and then the color guard snapped to attention. A volley of rifle fire, then Taps, and then a tall young soldier in dress blues handed a folded flag to the mother, who murmured her thanks and tried to smile.
I suddenly realized that I felt out of place there with my gaudily-patriotic bike and my red-white-and-blue striped shirt. No one noticed me, though, and when the people started to slowly move away from the gravesite and back to the entrance, I followed along until I was able to ride slowly back to our friends' house, park my bike with all the others, and find my parents, who probably hadn't even noticed that I was not there with all the other kids running around and playing on the lawn.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
Memorial Day
Posting will be light today, as today is Memorial Day in the US, and many of us have community and/or family events we'll be attending.
On Memorial Day, we remember and honor the women and men of the US military services who have given their lives for their country. If there is someone specific you would like to acknowledge today, please feel welcome and encouraged to do that here.
I would like to remember my Uncle Edward, who served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, and was one of the 292,131 servicemembers who never came home. I never had the chance to meet him; the closest I ever got to him was dragging my fingers slowly across the raised fingers of his name on a bronze memorial gone green with age.
Open Thread
Hosted by Ray Harryhausen's monster from It Came From Beneath The Sea.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by tentacled things.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Quote of the Day
"The House GOP's rather pitiful jobs manifesto...illustrates, once again, the foolishness of believing that we can reach any real bipartisan agreement on economic policy. The GOP stopped thinking a long time ago; all it knows how to do is parrot Reaganite rhetoric over and over. And there’s so little there there that the document—look at it!—has to rely on extra-large type and lots of pointless pictures to bulk it out even to 10 pages."—Paul Krugman.
In related news, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ealpieceofwork) says "substantial Medicare cuts must be part of a spending and deficit cut package to get his support to raise the debt limit." Or, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's spokesperson Jon Summers aptly describes it: "Republicans are holding the United States' credit hostage to ram through their plan to end Medicare."
No jobs, no healthcare, no social safety net...just BOOTSTRAPS FOR EVERYONE!!!
Two Facts
1. When I contemplate the amount of blogging I have been obliged to do in the past year about protecting from our government reproductive rights and female survivors of sexual assault, I feel hated by my country for having the temerity to be a woman.
2. The next time I am accused by a conservative of being insufficiently patriotic, I will not launch into my usual response about the difference between loving this country for what it could be, versus loving it uncritically for what it is. I will simply say, "Yes. I find it challenging to express love for my country, when it so clearly does not love me."
Just...what.
The House GOP are really full of...ideas...aren't they? Here's a new one from Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): clear cut the rain forests. Why? To eliminate greenhouse gasses responsible for climate change.
Yes. I know.
Anyway, here is what happened:
...Mr. Rohrabacher declare[d] during a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that clear-cutting the world’s rain forests might eliminate the production of greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.Sigh.
On the witness stand was Todd Stern, the Obama administration’s climate change envoy, who was questioned on whether the nation’s climate policy should focus on reducing the more than 80 percent of carbon emissions produced by the natural world in the form of decaying plant matter.
“Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rain forests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” the congressman asked Mr. Stern, according to Politico.
“Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?” he continued.
Pope Advisor Oversees Priest Arrested for Sex Abuse
[Trigger warning for sexual violence; clergy abuse.]
Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, has been arrested on charges that he attempted to molest an underage altar boy and gave young men over 18 cocaine in exchange for sex.
The accused was overseen by head of the Italian Bishops Conference, who "has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests."
Of course he has.
[H/T to Spudsy.]
Just a Simple Question
Q: If a corporation can now, like an individual, contribute directly to a political candidate, then why the FUCK can't they be taxed like an individual?
A: Radix malorum est cupiditas.
Random YouTubery
[Video Description: Kitten looks adorable while sleeping on its back in a bed, twitching dreamily; Mama Cat looks adorable while hugging kitten and then snuggling hir even more tightly.]
Fixed That For Ya'
CNN.com asks: "Is raising a child free of gender roles a good idea?" As long as CNN's at it, there are all kinds of questions they might consider asking:
[On the left, the actual CNN.com poll, on the right, I ask if "polling the public on the merits of other families' personal choices is a good idea"]
CNN is, of course referring to the story of Storm, a baby whose parents have not publicly revealed their child's medically assigned gender.
If you like polls and transphobic headlines, NBC's Today has you covered.
[Commenting guidelines: The parents' choice is off-limits for discussion, and what is on-topic is CNN's decision to run a poll about it.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky Brand Salted Coffee.
Recommended Reading:
Patrick: [TW for homophobia] Conversion Therapy: She Tried to Make Me 'Pray Away the Gay'
Fannie: [TW for misogyny and body policing] Being the Sex Class, Again
Pam: Open the GayTM!: HRC Endorses Obama for 2012
Helen: Draft DSM-5 Again Open for Public Comment
Andy: [TW for homophobia] Illinois Catholic Diocese Lays Off 58 Workers, Damages Countless Children Rather Than Accept Gays
Amber: Summer Movie Preview
Leave your links in comments...
Hmmm. No.
So garbage governor Rick Perry (R-TX) is toying with the press:
Gov. Rick Perry said today he will consider running for president after Legislature adjourns. "I'm going to think about it," the Republican governor said today. [...] But Perry's name is an increasingly hot property in the political world as nobody in the Republican field seems to have emerged as a clear front-runner.Well, if Rush Limbaugh is praising you, that should really tell you something.
[...]
Perry got an endorsement this week from an Hispanic Republican group and has been praised in recent days by talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh. [...]
Word of advice regarding "thinking about it", Rick: Don't.
According to Slate:
Mitt Romney will officially launch his campaign in New Hampshire on Thursday, June 2. Rick Santorum will make his White House desires official with a campaign event in Pennsylvania on June 6. And Michele Bachmann is expected to follow suit with a formal announcement in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, sometime in the next several weeks.Barf. However, no word yet on Shakesville's endorsed GOP ticket, Goat & Paperclip.
Canada Supreme Court Rules Unconscious People Cannot Give Consent
by Shaker BGK, who desperately wants the Vancouver Canucks to bring the Stanley Cup home.
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
As a citizen of a US city near the 49th parallel, I try to keep an eye on what our northern neighbors are doing. So in my morning click to cbc.ca, I was pleased to find the following news from Ottawa:
No consent in unconscious sex case: Supreme CourtThat's an awesome legal precedent to set, and makes it much more difficult to make those familiar arguments about victims being complicit in their own rapes or giving advance consent or existing in a perpetual state of consent unless they say no or any of the other rape culture narratives used to try to make "having sex" with an unconscious person not rape.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing for the majority, said a person must be conscious during sexual activity to give consent.
Despite the countless people will slut-shame the victim, because clearly she wore that mini-skirt and therefore wanted it, or he had too many drinks that night and therefore was asking for it, it seems to me that the legal standard being applied here is much stricter, and I think Canadians of all genders will be safer for it.
I am, however, dismayed that the cbc author included some specifics of the sexual history of the two people involved in this case as the article itself is ostensibly a blurb about the ruling, not a full history of the case. It seems as though these specifics serve as a dogwhistle to slut-shame and diminish the integrity of the victim. It does not focus on the defendant's actions, but adds a layer of confusion to the article, subtly encouraging us to feel sorry for the defendant, instead of believing the prosecution—a common trick of the media in a patriarchy.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Chief Justice of the Cour Supreme du Canada is the Right Honourable Beverly McLachlin, that four of the nine judges were women, and that all four women voted in favor of the ruling. I am sad to say I have a hard time believing that the US Supreme Court would deliver a similar opinion.
[Commenting Guidelines: Comments debating the specifics of the case at the center of this decision are off-limits for this discussion.]
Number of the Day
$1.5 billion: The cuts made to disaster preparedness, including $460 million in funding for firefighter grants and $1.1 billion in state and local grants administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), made by the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee, while trimming the FEMA and Homeland Security budget.
"In today's environment," said Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY), according to CQ, "we can't be subsidizing local governments to the extent we have." Parts of his district were declared a federal disaster area earlier this month because of catastrophic flooding.For eight years under the Bush administration, Republicans talked nonstop about national security, and used hyperbolic fearmongering about terrorism to justify extraordinary expenditures in defense, including two endless wars.
Meanwhile, countless USians have lost their jobs, their homes, their savings, their possessions, their food security, their healthcare, and the physical security of solid infrastructure and robustly-funded disaster preparedness.
We have traded everything away, every piece of real security and material safety we actually had, in exchange for protection from the existential threat of a boogeyman.
Yet Another Completely Isolated Act of Terrorism
[Trigger warning for gun violence, eliminationism, misogyny, vigilantism, Christian supremacy, and body policing]
On Wednesday night, police in Madison arrested a man who had come to town with plans to kill people at the local Planned Parenthood.
Ralph Lang, 63, told a Madison police officer at the Motel 6, 1754 Thierer Road, that he had a gun “to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies,” according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.And of course, that was just the beginning of his plans:
Lang said he planned on shooting the clinic’s doctor “right in the head,” according to the complaint. Asked if he planned to shoot just the doctor or nurses, too, Lang replied he wished he “could line them up all in a row, get a machine gun, and mow them all down,” the complaint said.
Sgt. Bernie Gonzalez looked around Lang’s motel room and saw a box that contained several documents, including a map of the U.S. with dots in each state and the handwritten words “some abortion centers.”Police only found out about the plot because the man accidentally shot his gun off in his hotel room.
Also written on the map was “Blessed Virgin Mary says Hell awaits any woman having an abortion.”
Of course, this wasn't the first time Lang had threatened Planned Parenthood. He was cited for disorderly conduct in 2007 after standing outside Planned Parenthood's Madison clinic calling for the assassination of everyone inside. That happened three years before he bought a gun for the purpose of doing "what [he felt] police officers fail to do.”
I can't imagine where Lang [TW] got the idea that this sort of behavior is appropriate. Oh [TW] wait, I do.
Interestingly enough, just yesterday President Obama signed a four-year extension of the Patriot Act, an act designed to give the US government absurd powers that many politicians claim are necessary to protect its residents from acts of terrorism.
Yet the president has been silent as
Yet the president acts as if there are two equal sides to this "issue".
Yet police are unable to do anything about a known anti-choice terrorist until after he buys a gun and shoots a hole in his hotel.
Obviously, I'd like to think that the arrest of yet another violent vigilante will finally alert those with political power to the dangers of their (at best) indifference. Sadly, I'm afraid I know better.
Via
I'm So Glad We Elected a Democrat, Part One Billion and Three
Obama signs Patriot Act extension:
President Barack Obama, who is attending a summit in France, directed the use of an autopen late Thursday to sign key provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire at midnight.Oh well! Two sides to every story! Guess there's NO WAY of figuring out who's right!
By a 250-153 vote, the Republican-led House agreed to extend the expiring provisions of the law passed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
...One of the three provisions, Section 206 of the Patriot Act, provides for roving wiretap surveillance of targets who try to thwart Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance. Without such roving wiretap authority, investigators would be forced to seek a new court order each time they need to change the location, phone or computer that needs to be monitored.
Another provision, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the FBI to apply to the FISA court to issue orders granting the government access to any tangible items in foreign intelligence, international terrorism and clandestine intelligence cases.
The third provision, Section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004, closes a loophole that could allow individual terrorists not affiliated with specific organizations to slip through the cracks of FISA surveillance. Law enforcement officials refer to it as the "lone wolf" provision.
Legislators opposed to the extensions claim that the provisions -- particularly related to wiretapping -- are intrusive and unconstitutional. Supporters argue that they are a critical component of U.S. anti-terror operations.
Hey, remember when Obama was against roving wiretaps and retroactive warrants and the executive branch using debates about national security to expand its own power...? Those were the days.
How to Get Away With Sexism at MSNBC
I've got a new piece at The Guardian's CifA about their evident policy of policing misogyny only when it's apparent in naked slurs, and how that policy not only teaches their hosts how to Do Misogyny and Get Away With It, but also entrenches the culture in which feminists who object to covert misogyny can be silenced with accusations of seeking out offense.
The effective result of MSNBC's double standard is that, far from discouraging its employees from engaging in misogyny, it actually rewards them for conveying their prejudices by dogwhistle sexism. Ostensibly banning the use of rank slurs, without penalising the sentiments behind them, elides the real and serious problem of gender bias in favour of a policy that essentially reduces to "don't get caught".Read the whole thing here.
The consequence of the PR-sensitive but female-insensitive MSNBC policy, which tolerates misogyny as long as it contains no undeniable slurs, is to ensure that the most insidious brand of women-hatred is broadcast on their network, via plausibly deniable wink-wink implications, objections to which can be dismissed out of hand by labelling critics as "over-reacting" and "hypersensitive", "reading into things" and "looking for stuff to get mad about" – all the usual silencing techniques wielded against feminists who challenge institutional gender bias.
Thus is the "I don't see it, so you're a feminist hysteric" nature of public conversations about misogyny in media perpetuated, as if sexism cannot be objectively assessed. (Spoiler alert: it can.)
Paul Blart: Zoo Fart
Below is the trailer for the upcoming Kevin James film Zookeeper, a film about animals at a zoo breaking "their code of silence in order to help their lovable zookeeper gain the attention of one particular woman." Sure. Despite the fact that animals revealing an ability to speak, concealed for millions of years, because their highest priority is getting Kevin James laid is one of the most depressing plots ever conceived, this film is allegedly a comedy.
Video Description: Kevin James, who is an extremely handsome man by mainstream standards but is supposed to be regarded as an ugly buffoon just because he's fat, and his tall, thin, white, blond girlfriend ride a horse down a beach at sunset. Kevin James "notices" a bottle in the sand. His girlfriend pulls out a note, which is a proposal. She turns to see Kevin James kneeling in the sand, holding out a ring. "Will you marry me?" he asks her. "No," she says, shaking her head. "I know it shouldn't bother me that you're a zookeeper, but…it kinda does." Cue the wacky music!
"Five years later," intones a male voiceover, over scenes of Kevin James zookeepering, "the world's most devoted zookeeper is getting a second chance." He bumps into his former girlfriend at a party at the zoo (sure), where she says she hopes her presence doesn't make him uncomfortable, and he unconvincingly assures her she doesn't, while holding a porcupine that shoots a quill into his face.
We are 40 seconds into this trailer, and we've been expected to laugh merrily at a man's heart being viciously broken and his body subjected to physical pain and emotional humiliation. The fact that he's fat makes it SUPER-hilarious, no doy.
Some David Spade wannabe (good lord) tells Kevin James to come work for him at the car dealership—you know, the one that all dudes with career crises are told they should work at with their sleazy friends in shitty movies. "That is how you get a girl like Stephanie," says Spavid Dade, and he means working at a car dealership. Because, little known fact, women who don't like zoologists totes love car salesmen. It's science, look it up.
Kevin James realizes, "I gotta get out of the zoo!"—because if ever there were a good idea, it is giving up the career you love in pursuit of someone who thinks you're garbage for loving that career.
OH NOES! thinks some monkey who overhears him announcing out loud his intent to leave the zoo to impress some woman with whom he's had no contact in five years.
The male voiceover explains: "The animals of the Franklin Park Zoo will have to do the unthinkable." Cut to a lion telling Kevin James they "need to talk," and Kevin James screaming, running away, hitting his head on a metal bar, and collapsing to the ground. HILARITY!!!
Animals talking. Bad CGI. Requisite exposition about how Kevin James is "the best zookeeper" the animals "ever had," so they had to break their legendary streak of NOT TALKING in order to talk to him about how to get laid. "You listen to us; we'll show you how to get the girl." If you guessed that he has to get the girl by acting like an animal, give yourself 10,000 points! Kevin James acts like a bear.
Uh-oh! Rosario Dawson, fellow zookeeper, catches him acting like a bear and looks confused. Gee, she is very pretty. I hope he gets her as a consolation prize when his attempts to woo the white blond lady who is an asshole are not successful!
Various scenes of Kevin James interacting with his former girlfriend's current suitor, whom the talking animals call his "rival." Of course. He humiliates himself in front of his former girlfriend again. Naturally. In the most shameless product placement of all time, a gorilla asks him if TGI Friday's is "as incredible as it looks." For sure. Montage of various garbage scenes, while The Talking Heads' "Wild, Wild Life" :( plays in the background. Cool. Kevin James growls like a bear at Spavid Dade. Yep.
A lioness tells him, "The best way to attract a female is to be seen with another female." Totes. Kevin James shows up at a wedding with Rosario Dawson on his arm, but only to make his former girlfriend jealous, which is why OBVIOUSLY he has to soar around the room on large strips of white fabric, then humiliate himself in front of her yet again (not to mention ruin the wedding) by knocking over the bride and smashing the ice sculpture.
It is at this point that maybe Kevin James should consider the whole "it bothers me that you're a zookeeper" thing was just a way of avoiding the whole "it bothers me that you are a dipfuck of epic proportions who cannot seem to function as a responsible adult human being despite having no impediments to that objective besides your irrepressible jackassery" thing.
Anyway, blah blah more bullshit, then Kevin James pulled up to TGI Friday's in a van with the gorilla in tow. Well, the gorilla's wearing a t-shirt. I'm sure no one will notice.
Question of the Day
Do you still have any items from your childhood that are very meaningful to you?
I have a few things here and there I've held onto, toys and games and collectibles, but probably the things I still have that mean the most to me are a handful of books that I loved as a child. My most treasured book is an old copy of Beautiful Joe, literally held together with brittle tape, which was my mother's when she was a little girl, then passed on to me.
Beautiful Joe is based on a true story of an abused and rescued dog, and was written by Marshall Saunders—actually Margaret Marshall Saunders, who entered (and won) a literary contest sponsored by the American Humane and Educational Society under her middle name because female authors weren't getting published. It was first published in 1893; my tattered copy, which I read and reread and reread as a child, is a 1955 edition.
My first memory of really loving a book is loving Beautiful Joe—and it's no exaggeration to say that the book was a significant influence on my life; I owe a great deal of my capacity for empathy to Joe's tale.
You can read it here, if you are so inclined.
Quote of the Day
"We have one [political party] that is really pushing toward centralization, collectivization, secularism—and we have some good people in that party; some of them are my best friends—but frankly they do not believe in individualism, they do not believe in the type of moral values that we do and we cannot compromise with them."—Senator Jim DeMint, (R-Ealcomedian), whose party likes one-size-fit-all solutions like "no abortion" and "marriage is only between one man and one woman," yet claims to be the great defenders of individualism.
Manal Al-Sharif: On the Road
by Shaker Moderator Aphra_Behn
[Trigger warning for misogyny, religious oppression, violence.]
She doesn't look like she's plotting to destroy an entire country.
She's just driving a car. [Description of video at link: A woman in head-scarf and sunglasses, speaking in Arabic while she drives.]
But for a woman in Saudi Arabia, that is nothing short of a revolutionary act. Manal Al-Sharif is currently in jail after posting a YouTube video of herself driving. As she waits in jail, her supporters are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to spread the word. Ms. Al-Sharif, who works as an IT security consultant, is being compared to Rosa Parks for her determination to challenge inequalities in the Kingdom's transportation system. The Women2Drive campaign is mobilizing women across Saudia Arabia in support of women's right to freely access healthcare, employment, education, and all the other human needs that are dependent upon transportation.
No other country on earth restricts women from driving. Public transport is limited, and proposals to make it accessible to women have stalled. Many women are entirely dependent on male relatives for transportation. Wealthy families may hire a driver. Poorer women may simply be stuck at home, especially if they are divorcees or widows.
Taking a taxi is possible, but it still leaves women in the company of unrelated men, a seeming contradiction to the argument that the driving ban preserves women from such mixing. Indeed, Al-Sharif and her supporters are pointing out such contradictions, making a case based on arguments relating to modesty and safety, as well as on inequalities of class and gender. For example, in the videoof herself driving that she posted to YouTube on May 19, Al-Sharif notes that women whose male drivers have a heart attack are put in an dangerous situation if they do not know how to take the wheel. The very name of the Facebook page for the campaign, called "Teach Me How To Drive So I Can protect Myself," emphasizes this. The pro-driving women of Saudi Arabia also emphasize their roles as mothers, daughters, and sisters. What is a daughter to do if caring for an ailing father who needs medical attention? How can a widow get her children to school?
Ms Al-Sharif and her supporters are organizing a mass action on June 17. In keeping with the tone of their campaign, it is meant to be a very civil protest, one that women can carry out without mass demonstrations or gatherings. The campaign simply calls for women with licenses from other countries to get in their cars and drive. That's it. (You can read a description of the protest, with background, from a supporter here. Pro-driving campaigners argue that they are not, in fact, even breaking the law, since the prohibition on driving came as a fatwa (religious edict), not the laws of the Kingdom.
I don't claim to be an expert on Islamic law, nor on the Kingdom Saudi Arabia for that matter, but I certainly want to give these brave women my support. Their campaign comes at a time when other challenges and changes are afoot:
• Samia, a Saudi surgeon, is going to court to challenge the guardianship system, which grants her male relatives have almost complete control over her life. She says her father takes most of her earnings and tries to force her to marry her a cousin whom she does not love, despite the fact that such forced marriages are against Islamic principle.
• The government had promised to allow women a vote in the fall municipal elections. When it reneged, groups of women began attempting to register anyway, creating a Facebook page called Saudi Women Revolution. As one of the women put it in this story, "We just have to find someone who will let us do it — someone who, you know, sees his daughter in us or his wife, or believes in it."
• King Abdullah just opened the Kingdom's first women-only university, a campus which can serve up to 50,000 students, and will significantly increase access to higher education for women.
As the last item might indicate, King Abdullah has signaled some support for women's rights. He appointed Norah al-Faiz as deputy minister of women's education, the first-ever female cabinet minister in Saudi history. In his first interview with Western media after assuming the throne (granted, significantly, to Barbara Walters) he stated:
I believe strongly in the rights of women. My mother is a woman. My sister is a woman. My daughter is a woman. My wife is a woman. I believe the day will come when women will drive. In fact if you look at the areas of Saudi Arabia, the desert, and in the rural areas, you will find that women do drive.
Of course, this was followed, frustratingly, with:
The issue will require patience. In time I believe that it will be possible. I believe that patience is a virtue.
As I said, I don't claim any expertise in Saudi politics or Islamic law, but this article (recommended at the Facebook Group Woman Behind the Wheel) gives some background to the interplay between religion and state in Saudia Arabia, with specific attention given to the driving ban. It's well worth a read. In it, Sheikh Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz Bin Baz, the son of the former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (the man who issued the fatwa against women driving), seems to indicate that the circumstances which drove the fatwa may no longer apply.
Yet it's also clear that the royal government needs the support of the religious leadership, including its hard-line elements. And make no mistake: The driving campaign has brought out some very ugly opposition. As this story notes, there is a Facebook campaign encouraging men to beat women drivers with cords on the day of the protest. The women campaigning to drive face genuine danger.
According to a commenter in the Saudi Women Drivers Facebook group, more attention from Western media would be helpful to their cause. There have been some stories covering the protest, but when (literally) the Muppets get top billing over Ms. Al-Sharif, then you know our garbage media is going to do its usual stellar job.
If you are able to do so, and would like to help boost the signal, you can use the tags #FreeManal and #Women2Drive on Twitter. In addition to the FB groups above, the large group We Are Supporting Manal Alsharif is providing many regular updates on Ms. Al-Sharif and other women supporting the driving movement. Although Ms. Al-Sharif's original YouTube posting and Facebook group were taken down, the Saudi government is learning that social media is hard to suppress. You can read more about the role of social networking in the campaign here. Further ideas for teaspooning are welcome in comments.
A Scene from the Life of a Feminist Fella
by Shaker BrianWS
Regular readers at Shakesville will all be familiar with the ways that certain words and attributes are coded in different ways depending on the gender of the person to whom they're being attributed to, and I've long known this to be true – but I'd never truly experienced it until this past weekend.
One of the biggest events in the industry in which I work was held this past weekend, and hundreds of media folks gathered for it. One of my goals for the event was to meet a woman who works in my industry in a relatively high-profile position, making her name easily recognizable to those who work in our field. I've seen her speak and engage with others on TV before, and I've always been drawn to her by her confidence, expertise, and assertiveness. While I wouldn't call her my "hero," for the reasons Liss wrote about here, she's certainly one of the people I most admire in my industry, and I wasn't going to pass up a chance to finally speak with her.
Talking excitedly to the guys with whom I traveled to this event about meeting her, I quickly discovered that the ways in which we viewed her couldn't have been more different. I found her to be engaging, intelligent, and strong. They viewed her as high-maintenance, obnoxious, and grating to listen to – and they assured me numerous times throughout the weekend (every hour, on the hour, it seemed) that she would surely be frosty to me when we met. That she would be aloof. That she would be rude. All of these dire warnings, issued with assuredness, came despite the fact that they, too, had never met her, but they had "heard stories" (surprise, surprise!) about what a "bitch" she is.
So after the big event wound down on Saturday evening, we all attended a media/industry party, and I was finally going to get to meet the woman I so admired. I admit that after weeks leading up to this event, and all the jokes and grim predictions about how terribly my finally meeting her would go being made all weekend, I was starting to worry about how it would go.
Nonetheless, once I found her at the event, I walked right up to her, beer in hand, and introduced myself, with two of my main antagonists from the weekend by my side. I explained who I was, who I worked for, and told her that I had always greatly admired her work, her expertise, and in a moment of fan-boy style flailing, I even blurted out, "Basically I just think you're completely awesome. I'm really glad we're friends on Facebook!" Seriously, what the fuck, BrianWS? Right?!
Here's the big reveal: she was everything I imagined she would be and then some. Not only was she kind, friendly, and not "too good" to talk to me – she was warm. She asked about my weekend and the work I had done, thanked me several times for introducing myself and telling her how much her work meant to me, and genuinely explained to me how difficult it could be sometimes and that it was great to get some positive feedback that people out there were enjoying the work she did. Even having been completely disarmed by her in those first minutes of our conversation, I still expected that she might not be willing to indulge my next request.
"Hey, this might sound kind of weird," I plunged in, "but I'm just so excited to have met you – would you maybe take a picture with me?"
She laughed, and said, "Absolutely!" And then she put her arm around me and took what I now consider to be one of my favorite photographs ever.
The entire experience was surreal in one way, because I was finally meeting someone I admired so much within my industry. On the other hand, it was so utterly predictable.
If a man acts confidently, it's because he's knowledgeable and has every right to be. If a woman does, it's because she's a "bitch." If a man acts assertively and doesn't like being interrupted when having a broadcast conversation, it's because he knows what he's talking about and should not be interrupted. If a woman does, it's because she's a "bitch."
Confidence, knowledge, expertise, and assertiveness are all coded in such a way that they're read as positive attributes in men and frosty, bitchy attributes in women, as if even though the woman I looked up to could hang with anyone when discussing our industry, she was a "bitch" because she wouldn't automatically defer to someone else's opinion.
That this woman whose (undeserved) bad reputation preceded her (to put it lightly) not only engaged me when I was probably not at my most eloquent due to my excitement about finally meeting her, but was genuinely warm and kind shouldn't have surprised me, and in a way it didn't. But for days leading up to this meeting, I had been so bombarded with the typical comments we always hear about confident, strong women (WARNING SIREN! BITCH ALERT!), that even I had begun to second-guess myself and wonder if I was wrong.
I wonder how many confident women get bad reputations because of the way people approach them. (My guesstimate: 100%.)
Perhaps if I had bought the line that she was a "bitch," and if I hadn't known any better, I'd have approached her in a different way than I did. Interactions are so colored by how they begin – what you put in is usually what you get back. If I had approached her as though she was going to be the rotten, cold woman I'd been told to expect she would be, I can imagine that she might have (quite understandably) responded in a way that confirmed those very prejudices. Instead, I approached her as a colleague who respected her for her work, and she treated me with great respect and kindness. Funny how that works, sometimes.
I'm thankful for the lessons I learned over the years about the way these things work, because without them, I might have really believed the things these guys were telling me in advance of meeting her and missed out on getting to chat with one of the kindest, smartest, most genuine people I've ever met within my industry. It won't be a conversation I'll soon forget, but it's also a reminder that I need to stay vigilant and remember to not forget the often small, often sneaky, but always insidious ways that misogyny works.
Even after our interaction, it was suggested that I only got along with her and she was only kind to me because I am gay, something she had no way of knowing with any certainty. See how that works? It's not that there are men who reflexively hate her on the basis of ancient narratives about strong women; it's that she irrationally hates men, and only makes special dispensation for the gay ones, who might as well be women.
To make a long story less long, I'll wrap this up with a short open letter:
Dear Misogyny,
You're always out there, and you're always working against us – but this time around, you lost.
Big time.
So fuck off.
xoxo,
BrianWS
Artist's recreation of the author's photograph with his admired colleague, using actual grinny BrainWS face from actual photo of actual awesomeness.
Today in Stupid Polls
The train has pulled into Extrapolation Station:
A new Sachs/Mason Dixon poll gets to the heart of the presidential choices in front of us. Who would you rather have lunch with? More than three times as many Americans - 53 percent - would choose to have a one-on-one lunch chat with President Obama over any of the Republican presidential conentenders. Sarah Palin placed a distant second, with 16 percent.The question that was actually asked was: "Among these announced or rumored contenders for President in 2012, which one would you most like to have a one-on-one conversation with over lunch?"
"Overwhelmingly, Americans find President Barack Obama to be the most likable and lunch-worthy date compared to any of those hoping take his job in the 2012 election," said Ron Sachs, President of Ron Sachs Communications. "There is no baloney in this simple truth: the 'lunch pal' poll very likely reflects the significant advantage President Obama enjoys heading into his re-election against a party that has no 'candidate du jour.'"
Assuming that people were axiomatically choosing the person they most like is completely unsound. I'm sure there are respondents who would never vote for President Obama but chose him nonetheless sheerly for the the opportunity to give the sitting president a piece of their minds.
Frankly, I'd have chosen Sarah Palin, and it sure ain't because I'm a fan. I am, however, interested in having a conversation with her.
Consider this the reminder to be extremely critical of polls purporting to wildly favor or disfavor any candidate, as we move into the Silly Season.
J'adore Adele
As I've briefly mentioned, I am way the hell into Adele at the moment. So is Iain, and when I put on her "Set Fire to the Rain" in protest of the bad weather on our journey east, she basically stayed in rotation through half of Ohio. We lurrrrrrve her.
Anyway, Tami's got a great post about Adele today, in which she expresses wonder at the number of people who try (and spectacularly fail) to cover Adele's stuff, especially "Rolling in the Deep." It's a sentiment with which I heartily agree; vanishingly few people are going to be able to tough Adele's version.
Meanwhile, Andy posts a video by three darling blokes (Alex Goot, Michael Henry, and Justin Robinett) who take on Adele with a sort of Glee-ified medley of "Rolling in the Deep," "Turning Tables," and "Someone Like You," and it's definitely one of my favorite covers of Adele's work so far. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Shaker erbie dropped into comments this video of PS22 Chorus singing "Rolling in the Deep," which is just ridiculously fantastic:
NYC Cops Acquitted of Rape; Times Coverage Vile
[Trigger warning for sexual violence; rape apologia; victim-blaming.]
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the New York Times abysmal coverage of a case in New York, in which a New York City police officer was on trial for raping a woman whom he had been summoned to help while his partner "stood guard." That article referred to the complainant in its opening sentence as "a drunken woman."
Today, the Times reports that the two officers were acquitted of all charges except "official misconduct for entering the woman's apartment."
That article opens with: "Two New York City police officers were found not guilty on Thursday of raping a drunken woman who had been helped into her apartment by the officers while on patrol." Emphasis mine.
Even after the men who allegedly raped her have been acquitted of their crimes, the Times can't help but engage in victim-blaming and rape apologia, despite the fact that it's the proliferation of precisely such narratives in the media that is responsible for the biases that result in appallingly low convictions in sex crimes cases.
Email the Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane and/or submit a Letter to the Editor.
This is a real thing in the world.
[Trigger warning for misogyny; body policing; colorism.]
Product Description, from the website (to which I'm not linking, but it's easy enough to find if you're so inclined): "My New Pink Button (tm) is a temporary dye to restore the youthful pink color back to your labia. There is no other product like it. This patent pending formula was designed by a female certified Paramedical Esthetician after she discovered her own genital color loss. While looking online for a solution she discovered thousands of other women asking the same questions regarding their color loss. After countless searches revealing no solution available and a discussion with her own gynecologist she decided to create her own. Now there is a solution!"
Comes in four shades: Marilyn ("the lightest of our colors; good for beginners who want to make a slight change fresh color change in their appearance or those who are very fair skinned"), Bettie ("This shade blends with a woman's own skin tones to bring out that 'sexy hot pink, I am fired up, look'"), Ginger ("will combine with darker skin tones to bring forth a real rosy tone"), and Audrey ("For the woman that loves to be daring, we bring you "Audrey"! This is the deepest, darkest color that we offer to give you a bold burgundy pink color. Perfect for everyone, and your own base color will determine the depth of this shade. Tonight its Show time!!").
What a wonderful way to honor our female icons—by appropriating their names to slap on a product designed to make women feel insecure about their vulvas.
I don't guess I need to mention that not every woman in the world has a pink vulva to begin with. (Or even a vulva at all.) There are many women—including many fair-skinned white women—whose vulvas are on the brown spectrum. Equating pink with whiteness and youth is flatly wrong.
But obviously a pretty common (and sinister) marketing ploy.
[H/T to @alikichapple.]
This'll Certainly End Well
The U.S. Supreme Court has just upheld an Arizona law that sets statewide policies on immigrants' rights. The law penalizes companies who hire undocumented immigrants, and dictates how employers are to verify potential employees' eligibility to work. There are already federal laws covering all of this, but five justices didn't have any problem with individual states making their own regulations concerning the best way to restrict the rights of non U.S. citizens.
And in case you missed it, last Monday the court ruled that police officers didn't really need search warrants if they decided there was an emergency:
The case came from Lexington, Ky., where police pursuing a drug suspect banged on the door of an apartment where they thought they smelled marijuana. After loudly identifying themselves, police heard movement inside, and suspecting that evidence was being destroyed, kicked in the door. There they found Hollis Deshaun King, smoking marijuana. Police also found cocaine inside the apartment.Um, I get it that we all hate brown people and people who smoke pot (at least brown people who smoke pot), but uh, the broader implications of these two cases are pretty staggering.
As it turned out, King was not the suspect police had been looking for, but the drug evidence in the apartment was more than enough to charge him with multiple crimes. King was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
But the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the drugs found in the apartment could not be used as evidence because the only emergency circumstances were those created by the police loudly alerting those inside. The state court said that instead of banging on the door and letting the inhabitants know the police were there, the police should have requested a warrant, a procedure that usually takes only a matter of minutes.
The U.S. Supreme Court, however, disagreed with the state court.
Basically, the Supreme Court decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the freedom rides by expanding states' rights and limiting the right to due process. Whoops!
