[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
Quote of the Day
Hello.
"I'm just Tommy who does his thing. I guarantee you within a couple of years' time this will all blow over and I'll be back to being about as interesting as I am, which is not very interesting at all. I'm just doing a bit of acting now and then. It's like I came to deliver a pizza and I got really lucky."—Tom Hardy. This guy.
In the same interview, he reveals that he once auditioned for Mr. Darcy in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and was told by a studio executive: "Every woman has an idea of who Mr. Darcy is, and I'm afraid you're just not it."
Whooooooooooooops!
Liss and Ana Talk About Stuff
[Content Note: Privilege. This is a conversation Ana Mardoll and I had on Twitter last night, which I am reproducing here with her permission.]
Ana: Welp: "The Hobbit movies were awful, and now we know why: I was pretty surprised when Peter Jackson took over from Guillermo del Toro to make the Hobbit trilogy, and [they were a mess]. In what can only be described as the most honest promotional video of all time, we find out why: the movies were made completely on the fly, without a script or nearly any advanced planning. …[T]hings got so bad that when they started shooting the titular Battle of Five Armies itself they were essentially just shooting B-roll: footage of people in costumes waving around swords, without any cohesive plan for how the sequence would actually play out. (A choice Jackson quote: 'I didn't know what the hell I was doing.')"
Liss: You know how people who aren't straight white cis men are just given hundreds of millions of dollars to dick around with.
Ana: Right? But we can't let NOT white cis dudes direct films because they haven't proved themselves!!
Liss: And then everyone thinks it's charming when they're all haha I didn't even know what I was doing! "Here, have one of the most coveted properties in all of filmdom. Just have fun! If you fuck it up, we'll promote the DVD w/ it!"
Ana: It'll be hilarious! We'll all look back and laugh from atop the pile of money we made!
Liss: #SmauginItUp #blessed
Ana: I'm dying laughing.
Liss: LOL
Ana: You're a lady and you just don't understand his vision!
Liss: I have been failing to understand straight white dudes' lack of vision for 41 years and counting.
Ana: Maybe you should smile more and make them cookies just a thought ;)
Liss:
Ana: THAT COOKIE BELONGED TO PETER JACKSON, MADAM
Liss: NOM NOM NOM
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Cobra Starship featuring Sabi: "You Make Me Feel"
This week's TMNS brought to you by "You Make Me" songs.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by hoop earrings.
Recommended Reading:
Sara: [Content Note: Transphobia; fat hatred] This Post Is High in Trans Fat
Abdullah: [CN: Islamophobia; terrorism] I'm a Muslim, and I Hold No Responsibility for the Actions of Daesh
Violet: My Transcendent, Painful Retirement from Sex Work
Miriam: AMA Calls for Ban on Consumer Ads for Prescription Drugs
Isha: [CN: Racism/colorism] Why Do Some Tattoo Artists Balk at Dark Skin?
Digby: Chris Hayes, Unique Among Journalists This Week
Dan: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Has Already Made $50 Million, and It's Not Even Out Yet
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
An Observation
[Content Note: Culture of entitlement.]
Adele has written a note to her fans about her new album, 25, and it is lovely: "I feel like I've spent my whole life so far wishing it away. Always wishing I was older, wishing I was somewhere else, wishing I could remember and wishing I could forget too. Wishing I hadn't ruined so many good things because I was scared or bored. Wishing I wasn't so matter of fact all the time. Wishing I'd gotten to know my great grandmother more, and wishing I didn't know myself so well... My last record was a break-up record and if I had to label this one I would call it a make-up record. I'm making up with myself."
She ends the letter thus: "25 is about getting to know who I've become without realising. And I'm sorry it took so long, but you know, life happened."
I wish Adele didn't feel like she has to apologize for how long it took her to record and release her latest album. We aren't owed her work.
She says "life happened," as though life got in the way of delivering another album to us, but people who make art about life need to have time to live their lives, outside their work.
Observers of life must have something to observe.
To be clear, this isn't a criticism of Adele. At all. It's a criticism of the culture of entitlement that makes her feel she needs to apologize.
She doesn't owe us that, either.
Daily Dose of Cute
Olivia loves my purple Docs almost as much as I do. She will curl up with my shoes (only that pair, though!) and spend hours rubbing her cheeks on them, then fall asleep on top of them. Excellent taste, that cat.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; death] Fuck: "At least three people have been killed in Mali after a group of attackers armed with guns and grenades stormed a luxury hotel in the capital, Bamako, taking up to 170 people hostage. Malian special forces were later seen launching an assault on the Radisson hotel, with local and state television saying dozens of hostages had been freed. However, the hotel's owners said according to its latest information 125 guests and 13 staff were still inside. Al-Mourabitoun, an African jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, claimed responsibility in a message posted on Twitter. The claim could not immediately be verified." The Guardian's live coverage of the events is here, and is being updated with the latest information as it becomes available.
[CN: Transphobia] Yesterday, a Wisconsin legislative committee heard hours of testimony on its reprehensible "bathroom bill." The Capitol hearing room was filled with people, many of whom were "sitting on the floors and standing for hours to have a chance to testify." And yet, before many opponents were given an opportunity to testify, Republican legislators decided to leave, refusing to hear testimony from other elected officials and school reps, as well as trans people and their allies who had patiently waited through hours of other testimony, including 50 minutes granted to a hate group. Fuck this. Fuck all of it.
[CN: Rape culture] Seven high school girls, most or all of whom are black, were kicked off the basketball team after they refused to play in a game to protest that their concerns about their male coach were not being taken seriously. The coach, who is not black, resigned his last post "for personal reasons," and, since being hired by this school, has twice had to be kicked out of the girls' locker room by the female assistant coach. Further, the players say they felt uncomfortable around him "because he was very feely. Hand on the shoulders and other places and stuff." Not only did the administration refuse to address their concerns, but they had the coach deliver the news that the girls were kicked off the team. When the girls' parents went to the school, they were told: "A thorough investigation by the St. Tammany Parish Public School System has found that allegations brought up in regards to the Salmen High Girls Basketball Coach are unfounded." Rage. Seethe. Boil.
[CN: War on agency] No surprise here: "A Washington state investigation into Planned Parenthood has found 'no evidence' of wrongdoing on the part of the women's reproductive healthcare provider following allegations the organization was selling or profiting from fetal tissue donations. Washington state joins a growing list of states where probes into Planned Parenthood have failed to turn up proof of any illegal activity."
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] This isn't good: "One of the country's largest health insurers warned Thursday that it may leave the ObamaCare exchanges within two years, delivering a shock announcement that could ripple through the marketplace. At a shareholder meeting Thursday, UnitedHealthcare cast doubt on its ability to carry plans on the healthcare law's exchanges beyond 2016, offering a more grim financial outlook than it had previously expected. 'In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide,' said Stephen Hemsley, the company's CEO. 'Co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step,' he said." Because insurance companies exist to generate profit, not to provide healthcare. Which is why we need single-payer healthcare that isn't run through for-profit insurance companies.
[CN: Christian supremacy] Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has created a "national prayer team," because of course he has: "Mr. Cruz, who has aggressively courted the support of evangelicals, said the creation of the team would 'establish a direct line of communication between our campaign and the thousands of Americans who are lifting us up before the Lord.'"
OMG! "Sources reveal that Columbia Records will ship 3.6 million physical copies of Adele's new album 25 in the U.S., which would probably mark the largest number of new-release CDs shipped in the past decade. The last album to ship more than that would have been *NSYNC's No Strings Attached, which shipped 4.2 million units back in 2000."
Yesssssssss: "David Bowie dropped an intense, nearly 10-minute film for his new track Blackstar, which is the latest chapter in his Major Tom saga and has fans eagerly anticipating his new album." I LOVE IT SO MUCH! It's like a hymn in the Church of Bowie!
And finally! "This 3-Week-Old Pygmy Hippo Is the Cutest Thing Imaginable." Pretty much.
Today in Things Fat People Have Been Telling You
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
For literally decades, fat activists have been pushing back on the "calories in calories out!" mantra shouted at us by fat haters who believe we are all liars and must all be suffering from disordered eating and consuming mass calories and never exercising and this is why we're fat, because human diversity doesn't exist and human beings are Bunsen burners.
Here is just a small selection of the posts I've written over the years on that garbage:
I Am Not a Bunsen Burner.
B-b-but CALORIES IN CALORIES OUT!!!
The Best Thing You'll Read All Day.
On Fat Hatred and Eliminationism.
Fatsronauts 101: "Everyone who is fat is fat for the same reason."
B-b-but Calories In Calories Out! (Again.)
Today in Fat Hatred.
Now, another study (thanks, science!) has found that what is a "healthy food" for one person (where "healthy food" is defined as not promoting weight gain, which is a whole other issue) might not be a "healthy food" for another person BECAUSE PEOPLE AREN'T BUNSEN BURNERS.
A healthy food for one person may lead another to gain weight, according to a study out Thursday that suggests a one-size-fits-all approach to dieting is fundamentally wrong.I'm grateful that there's now Official Evidence of a thing that fat activists have been saying over and over and over, but I am really angry at the mystified shock being expressed by these researchers that all bodies don't work the same, because it's such clear evidence that researchers haven't been listening to fat people, or trusting us when we report our lived experiences, or treating us as authorities on our own lives.
..."The first very big surprise and striking finding that we had was the very vast variability we saw in people's response to identical meals," said researcher Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
...Researchers were stunned to see the difference in people's metabolic responses to the exact same foods. For instance, some people's blood sugar rose higher after eating sushi than it did after eating ice cream.
And for one middle-aged woman, the act of eating tomatoes -- which she thought were part of a healthy diet -- actually caused her blood sugar to rise significantly.
"There are profound differences between individuals -- in some cases, individuals have opposite responses to one another -- and this is really a big hole in the literature," said Segal.
...Co-author Eran Elinav said the study "really enlightened us on how inaccurate we all were about one of the most basic concepts of our existence, which is what we eat and how we integrate nutrition into our daily life."
Instead of urging people to eat low-fat diets, a more personalized approach -- one that puts an individual at the center of the plan, rather than the diet -- could be useful to help people control high blood sugar and improve their health, he said.
There are people who make entire careers out of studying "obesity" who never listen to fat people. That is a problem.
It's a problem that fat people are called liars, when we are not being ignored, for saying the very thing that this study has concluded. It's a problem that we aren't taken seriously, or afforded the presumption of good faith, when we say that we know our bodies don't work the same way as many privileged bodies, because we can see it with our own fucking eyes. It's a problem that fat people are gaslighted and convinced that their fat is exclusively the result of personal failure, because other people refuse to fucking believe that maybe our bodies are just different.
So, you know, thanks for the research. But goddamn is it aggravating that we need a funded study to give permission to maybe treat as credible what fat people are saying about our own fucking selves.
This Must Stop
[Content Note: Islamophobia; violence; eliminationism.]
At Buzzfeed, Alicia Melville-Smith and David Mack have documented seven acts of of anti-Muslim vandalism and/or threats in the US just since the IS attacks in Paris. This list does not, of course, include the personal assaults and countless acts of microaggressions perpetrated against Muslims—or people wrongly perceived to be Muslim, like Sikhs—in the same period.
This violence and harassment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a climate of fearmongering, scapegoating, and horrendous othering, led by the presidential candidates in one of the two major political parties in the country.
[Video may autoplay at link] Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich, the moderate in the group, proposed "creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world."
Which is heinous, and yet is nonetheless one of the least offensive proposals to come out of Republican leaders, whose House caucus last night approved legislation, sure to be vetoed by President Obama if it even makes it through the Senate, "that would make it even more difficult for refugees from Syria and Iraq to enter the United States," despite the fact that Syrian refugees "tend to provide extensive documents involving their day-to-day lives. They often arrive with family histories, military records and other information that can be useful for American authorities investigating them."
[Video may autoplay at first link] On the even more extreme end of the spectrum, Donald Trump said he would "absolutely implement" a database tracking Muslims in the US, and even entertained a proposal to require Muslims to carry a special form of identification.
(Apart from the fact that this is cruel, othering, and profoundly hostile to the ideals of the pluralistic society the US professes to be, what the fuck purpose does Donald Trump et. al. even imagine this would serve? Any human being who commits criminal violence isn't a criminal until the day that they are. Tracking people isn't effective prevention, even if it weren't colossally indecent.)
Ben Carson just went right for the most appalling dehumanization, and compared Syrian refugees to rabid dogs:
"For instance, you know, if there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you're probably gonna put your children out of the way," Carson told reporters during a campaign stop in Alabama on Thursday. "Doesn't mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination."I cannot say this any more plainly: Comparing human beings to rabid dogs, which are put down, is eliminationist rhetoric. There is a long history of comparing people to vermin, to insects, to other creatures we "get rid of," and it is rightly recognized as eliminationism. What Carson is saying here is no different.
"By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly," he continued, according to Politico. "Who are the people who wanna come in here and hurt us and wanna destroy us? Until we know how to do that, just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on, it's foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening."
This inflammatory rhetoric and legislative hostility is fostering a climate of hatred, intolerance, threats, and violence. It is irresponsible, it is gross, and it is harmful.
And it must stop.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
[Content Note: Transphobia; violence; neglect; self-harm.]
A candle burns at Shakes Manor.
Today marks the 17th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is "set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the 'Remembering Our Dead' web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester's murder—like most anti-transgender murder cases—has yet to be solved."
The official TDOR website has documented the killing of 79 trans people this year. Transgender Europe's Trans Murder Monitoring project has documented "271 cases of reported killings of trans people from October 1st 2014 to September 30th 2015." Additional information available here.
Two hundred and seventy-one people known to have been killed as a result of hatred and ignorance.
Every year I quote this and this year will be no different, because it is so important: Julia Serano, a trans activist and author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, has noted that transphobia kills not just by violent action, but apathetic inaction.
Trans people are often targeted for violence because their gender presentation, appearance and/or anatomy falls outside the norms of what is considered acceptable for a woman or man. A large percentage of trans people who are killed [work in the sex trade], and their murders often go unreported or underreported due to the public presumption that those engaged in sex work are not deserving of attention or somehow had it coming to them.The 2001 documentary Southern Comfort details the last year in the life of Robert Eads, who died of ovarian cancer after two dozen doctors refused him treatment.
Some trans people are killed as the result of being denied medical services specifically because of their trans status, for example, Tyra Hunter, a transsexual woman who died in 1995 after being in a car accident. EMTs who arrived on the scene stopped providing her with medical care—and instead laughed and made slurs at her—upon discovering that she had male genitals.
That's the kind of hate crime that doesn't make headlines. Or even federal hate crimes statistics.
* * *
Just this morning, Shaker CaitieCat sent me a heads-up about the death of Vicky Thompson, a 21-year-old trans woman who was found dead last week at a men's prison in the UK, where she had been sent after being found in violation of a suspended sentence. An investigation into Thompson's death is underway, but she had told friends she would kill herself if sent there. The day before she was found dead, she spoke to her boyfriend, telling him that she was being harassed for being a woman.
Thompson's case is, unfortunately, hardly unique. Trans women are routinely, and perilously, incarcerated in men's facilities: In prisons, in military prisons, in immigration detention centers. Some of them lose, or take, their lives as a result of this systemic hostility.
We remember all the victims of violence and apathy and institutional transphobia today.
A day that I wish, that we all wish, didn't have to exist at all.
I hate that there are trans people who die because of hatred and neglect and ostracization, and I hate there are people who have to document the most violent of these deaths, committed to an important project the best possible result of which would be that it ends because we don't need it anymore. Because there are no more deaths to document.
* * *
At Colorlines, Miriam Zoila Pérez suggest three ways to observe the TDOR. In many places—including Baltimore, New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans—there will be Trans Marches of Resilience; I haven't been able to find a source that's compiled in one place all the locations where marches are scheduled, but you should be able to find out if there's one near you with some Googling.
Here is a collection of some terrific artwork by eight trans and gender-nonconforming artists, a project coordinated by trans visual artist Micah Bazant, who is "really excited about getting these posters into the streets for some of the trans marches of resilience."
* * *
Last year, Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the founder of TDOR, wrote movingly here about the history and import of the day. About why we need it still.
No oppression has ever been eradicated by a careful, polite, diligent deference to pretending it doesn't exist. That is the importance of a day of remembrance.
No oppression has ever been eradicated without meaningful inclusion and visibility, either, which slowly chips away at the privilege that underwrites marginalization. That is the importance of vigilance in community every day of the year.
* * *
I recognize that trans people have all kinds of different feelings about the Day of Remembrance, and if you're someone who needs to express distress about it, please know you have a space to do that here.
Open Thread
Hosted by Peggle.
This week's Open Threads have been brought to you by games I love to play.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker checarina: "City or country? (Or suburb?)"
I have lived in all three (well, not quite "country," but in the exurbs bordering the country), and find pros and cons to all three. I'm equally happy everywhere. Which is a boring answer, I realize, but it's true!
An Observation
One of the things that people say, in order to discourage people who fight for social justice, is that the world will never change and will always be terrible.
And, despite bits and pieces of progress, here and there, the nagging suspicion that might be true is one of the things that can demoralize people who fight for social justice.
Maybe they're right. Maybe the world will always be terrible, in one way or another.
But this is the thought that sustains me, always: Maybe what we're doing is making that world tolerable for individual people in it. And that's no small thing.
To care about other people is always important.
It might be the most important thing. Especially in a world that cares about so few.
So what if they are right? That only urges me to care harder.
It does not give me reason to care less. And it certainly does not give me reason to stop expecting more.
[Reposted for anyone who needs it right now. With special thanks to Shaker GoldFishy, for always being a rock solid friend.]
Jared Fogle Sentenced to 15 Years
[Content Note: Rape culture; child assault; fat hatred. Video may autoplay at link.]
Jared Fogle, former spokesperson for Subway, who was facing a sentence anywhere from 5 to 50 years, was sentenced to 15 years and 8 months by US District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis today. Fogle had pleaded guilty to "one count of possession of child pornography and one count of traveling across state lines to have sex with [sic] a minor."
The sentence is more than the 12 1/2 years that prosecutors agreed to seek in a plea deal. Pratt said the advisory sentence range of 135 to 168 months "does not sufficiently account for the defendant's criminal conduct."During the hearing, Fogle's defense attorneys enlisted the testimony of forensic psychiatrist John Bradford of the University of Ottawa, who tried to persuade the judge to give Fogle a light sentence because he has, in Bradford's words, "weak pedophilia." Thankfully, prosecutor Steven DeBrota pushed back on that shit:
Federal prisoners must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The judge recommended that Fogle be sent to a prison in Littleton, Colo., because of its program for sex offenders.
DeBrota, cross-examining Bradford, asked him about "mild" or "weak" pedophilia and whether those terms are used by other experts in his field.And we know this because admitted rapist Jared Fogle says so, I guess.
Bradford said they are not used by other experts.
"So that's a term you've come up with to provide scaling to the word pedophilia?" DeBrota said.
Bradford said yes.
...DeBrota asked Bradford about Fogle viewing images of children as young as 6. Bradford said that's still consistent with his diagnosis of "weak pedophilia."
DeBrota tried to make the point that Fogle is indeed interested in young children.
Fogle had "occasional fantasies" of sex with children, Bradford said.
"Not that he doesn't have an interest in children, but he has never laid a hand on, or molested, a child," Bradford said.
The defense also tried to argue that Fogle, who famously lost a lot of weight by, according to him, walking to Subway every day to purchase one of their sandwiches, a tale that landed him the spokesperson gig, "traded a food addiction for a sex addiction." Fuck that. It's not that it isn't possible for someone to substitute one addiction for another, but Fogle isn't a "sex addict." He's a rapist and a pedophile. And conflating disordered eating with a total disregard for consent and the abuse of women and children is some goddamn bullshit.
Relatedly, there are lots and lots of rape jokes being made on social media and comments on news items in association with this story, so heads-up if you were considering reading about this elsewhere. Also, I shouldn't have to say this here, but just in case: Rape jokes are categorically unwelcome in this space and will be deleted and their authors banned.
HEROES
One of my all-time favorite Deeky W. Gashlycrumb posts is this precious gem from 2012, in which he highlighted some of the best in Ron Paul Fanboy Photoshopping. I absolutely adore conservative hero art, and there is no shortage of it during any presidential election.
Conservative hero art is distinct from other conservative photoshopping of "memes" that are in actuality nothing but full-tilt bigotry. It is, instead, the patriotic elevation of the vile politicians whose platform is the legislation of that bigotry.
Shaker jenn_smithson just emailed me this beauty she found posted (unironically) on Facebook:
WOW! That is stunning.
This is one of my favorite pieces of Ted Cruz conservative hero art:
Just kidding. That's an actual page from Ted Cruz's coloring book for children. Which I'm fairly certain was mostly purchased by adults. For themselves.
Anyway! Seen any good conservative hero art this election care of friends or relatives you can't delete from Facebook without causing drama you don't want to deal with?
Fat Fashion
This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.
* * *
Here is a terrific piece by Bethany Rutter on what plus-size fashion is getting wrong:
At the core of what's holding plus-size fashion back is a set of rigidly imposed rules and norms. The ultimate goal is to pretend you're not fat. The secondary goal is to reproduce hegemonic beauty standards by faking or creating 'womanly curves,' prizing so-called femininity, huge boobs, a flat stomach and wide hips. Using these two goals as the focal point of most design decisions means that most mainstream plus-size fashion is not a radical place.It's literally one extreme or the other: Fat women either have to wear something "flattering," defined as something that is supposed to magically make you look not fat, or have to wear something shapeless and billowing in order to cover our fat bodies as completely as possible, in order to concede "yes I'm fat and I'm so ashamed of it and I am wearing something that protects your delicate eyes from the horror of my visible fatness."
...You would think that fat women would be excited to see a great diversity of styles, an opportunity to try looks they hadn't been allowed to before, but no. The rigid orthodoxy imposed by the big brands is so pervasive that choice and diversity is seen as a negative. Clothes that don't 'hug your curves' or 'flatter your figure' are treated like a threat.
...All of this is the effect of the 'Cult of Flattering.' This is one of the strongest, most dominant norms of plus-size dressing, and dictates pretty much every styling decision made in plus-size fashion. For the uninitiated, this school of thought entirely revolves around the myth that these clothes will make fat people look thinner if you wear them in this way. These clothes will conceal the fact that you're fat. This styling will trick those around you into believing you're thin. Not flattering? Don't wear it. Tight, short, bright, eye-catching, oversized, textural? But it's not flattering.
...You don't need me to tell you this is a thoroughly pointless endeavour. If you're fat, you'll look fat whatever you wear, and the sooner you and yours accept that, the better. More than that, though, the sooner you accept you're fat, the sooner you can start dressing in the ways you want for the body you have, rather than dressing in ways you think will give you the body you don't have.
It's a sorry state of affairs that fashion, that's meant to be fun, experimental and a way for people to express their personality, has, for fat women, become merely an exercise in (self-)deception. Instead of saying "what do I want to wear today?" or "What excites me?" the question is "How do I most efficiently pretend my body is what it's not?" It's a joyless enterprise, and fat women deserve better.
Either way, so much of plus-size clothing is about trying to minimize or disguise fat bodies, instead of just dressing them well.
Anyway! As always, all subjects related to fat fashion are on topic, but if you want a topic for discussion: What is your favorite feel-good outfit?
Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.
Daily Dose of Cute
One day you will be mine, birds. One day you will be mine.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; death] "The suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was among those killed in a French police raid on Wednesday, prosecutors say. They confirmed the Islamic State (IS) militant had died in a flat in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis. ...In another development, nine arrests were made in Belgium after searches in connection with Friday's attacks."
[CN: War on agency] Fuuuuuuuck: "Nearly 9,000 Rhode Islanders have lost comprehensive abortion coverage through their insurance plans, thanks to a budget bill signed in June by Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo—and some of them may not be aware of the change. Article 18 of the 2016 budget appropriations bill requires health insurers that offer plans on Rhode Island's health insurance exchange to also offer plans that exclude coverage for elective abortions. As of November 7, according to a press release issued by Rhode Island's health insurance exchange, HealthSource RI, 30,680 individuals had signed up for coverage through the exchange for plan year 2016. Almost all of those people are enrollees whose plans were automatically renewed for next year through a common process called 'mapping,' by which HealthSource RI either keeps enrollees in their same health plan, or switches them to a comparable one. Many of these 'comparable' plans offer only minimal coverage for abortion—in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother's life is in danger—as required by law. Close to 9,000 HealthSource RI customers were automatically re-enrolled in plans that exclude abortion coverage, according to Rhode Island Public Radio. These customers have until December 23 to switch plans. If they don't, they may not become aware that their plans do not cover elective abortions until they need one."
[CN: Refugee crisis; xenophobia] Well, the fearmongering is working rage seethe boil: "Most Americans want the U.S. to stop letting in Syrian refugees amid fears of terrorist infiltrations after the Paris attacks, siding with Republican presidential candidates, governors, and lawmakers who want to freeze the Obama administration's resettlement program. The findings are part of a Bloomberg Politics national poll released Wednesday that also shows the nation divided on whether to send U.S. troops to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State, an idea President Barack Obama opposes, and whether the U.S. government is doing enough to protect the homeland from a comparable attack. Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults in the survey, conducted in the days immediately following the attacks, say the nation should not continue a program to resettle up to 10,000 Syrian refugees." Uh, that's not "most Americans." It's a majority, unfortunately, but it's not most.
[CN: Refugee crisis] And all the handwringing about "proper vetting," despite the fact that refugees are extremely well vetted: "Unless you go through it, you don't realize how emotionally taxing this is."
Here's just a cool headline about a cool guy: "Donald Trump has big plans for 'radical Islamic' terrorists, 2016 and 'that communist' Bernie Sanders."
Meanwhile, the latest Public Policy Polling survey finds that Trump is still leading the GOP field "with 26%, followed by Ben Carson at 19%, Ted Cruz at 14%, and Marco Rubio at 13%. No one else in the GOP field even gets more than 5%. Jeb Bush reaches that mark followed by Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee at 4%." Gross. (Which part? All of it.)
On the other side of the aisle: "O'Malley's presidential campaign is perilously close to financial collapse." Whooooops!
Whoa: "Galactic Monster Mystery Revealed in Ancient Universe: Astronomers have detected something baffling at the furthest frontiers of our observable universe: massive galaxies—lots of massive galaxies—that shouldn't even exist. Depending on the wavelength you observe the universe in, different celestial objects and cosmic phenomena present themselves. This rule is especially true when looking deeper into the universe—the further you look, the farther back in time you can see. Because the universe is expanding, the most ancient light traveling over these vast distances becomes more difficult to observe. ...In an effort to reveal galaxies that have remained hidden from view at these vast distances, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile has revealed some of the youngest galaxies discovered to date, galaxies that were born a mere billion years after the Big Bang. But there's something weird going on: There's lots of them. And they're monsters." Rrrowwwrrr!
Whoa, Part Two: "This Parasite Is Really a Micro-Jellyfish: A group of parasites that scientists formerly thought were protists—a huge category of microorganisms—are actually members of Cnidaria, the phylum that includes jellyfish and coral. Somewhere along the evolutionary line, the recently re-classified parasites, myxozoans, left behind all forms of mouths, guts or ability to survive outside of a host. ...'Because they're so weird, it's difficult to imagine they were jellyfish,' [Paulyn Cartwright, an evolutionary biologist and an author of a new paper that reclassifies the creatures] says in the release. But they did retain one key feature: Myxozoans still have a complex structure that looks like the stinging cells of jellyfish, called a nematocyst... The researchers aren't sure what caused the parasites to change so drastically from their jellyfish-like ancestors, but they are interested in finding out more. 'Myxozoa absolutely redefines what we think of as animal,' says Cartwright."
"This is fresh. This came from a different space."—Producer Tony Visconti on David Bowie's forthcoming new album Blackstar. I CAN'T WAAAAAAIT!!! Do you think the different space it came from is a secret monster galaxy? I bet it is!
Loooove: "To woo potential mates, the blue-capped cordon bleu performs a high-speed tap dance too fast for the human eye to see."
And finally! Willow the Piglet is very excited about a pile of leaves! LOL aww!
The Laziest Little Misogynists
[Content Note: Misogyny; harassment.]
My day started this morning, as so many of my days do, with some rando misogynist on Twitter responding to one of my tweets by telling me he bets I never get laid.
Which was obviously a perfect response and definitely didn't prove the very point I was making about misogynist men.
A couple of thoughts:
1. I love how misogynists insist on believing that feminist women value ourselves by their assessment of our fuckability. Whoooooooops!
2. There has literally never been a single time where some misogynist wreck has pronounced he doesn't want to fuck me, and I thought: "Awww damn."
3. This shit offends me as a woman but also a person of wit. Is there anything more creatively bankrupt than the old "feminists are ugly/fat/hairy/unfuckable" chestnut? It's been done. Get a new shtick, trolls.
Of course, I can't even recall the last time I received a bit of misogynist harassment that I hadn't already seen eleventy biebillion times before. Misogynists are so fucking lazy.
Let us commence to share in comments every bit of lazy misogynist harassment we've seen endlessly disgorged by lazy misogynists straight out of the Lazy Misogynist Harasser's Handbook. Aaaaaaand go!
World Toilet Day
[Content Note: Lack of health and safety.]
Today is World Toilet Day, dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of safe and accessible toilets globally:
South Sudan, where 93% of the population lacks access to an adequate toilet, has fewer safe and hygienic latrines per person than any other country in the world, according to a study highlighting the world's failure to address the global sanitation crisis.
In a report released on world toilet day, WaterAid ranked countries according to how difficult it was to find toilets meeting basic hygiene standards. Among developed countries, Russia had the worst sanitation record, with more than a quarter of its population lacking access to safe, private toilets.
The UN defines an improved toilet or latrine as a facility that hygienically separates human waste from human contact; this could be through a mechanical or manual flush that sends the waste matter to a piped sewer system, septic tank or pit latrine. Composting toilets also qualify as improved toilets.Toilets are a major feminist issue: "A survey commissioned by WaterAid and released for World Toilet Day has shown that of women surveyed in five slums in Lagos, Nigeria, one in five had first or second hand experience of verbal harassment and intimidation, or had been threatened or physically assaulted in the last year when going to the toilet. ...Other studies from Uganda, Kenya, India, and the Solomon Islands show that such experiences of fear, indignity, and violence are commonplace wherever women lack access to safe and adequate sanitation. ...Lack of decent sanitation also affects productivity and livelihoods. Women and girls living in developing countries without toilet facilities spend 97 billion hours each year finding a place to go in the open."
...Poor access to safe toilets can lead to faecal matter contaminating water and food, raising the risk that diseases such as diarrhoea – the second leading cause of death in children under five – could spread through vulnerable populations.
WaterAid's senior policy analyst on sanitation, Andrés Hueso, said countries in conflict, such as South Sudan and Niger, often had the poorest access to adequate toilets. "When countries go through conflict or major instability, often the priorities shift to basic survival aspects, which ignore proper sanitation," he explained. "Also institutions at this time are very weak, and donors tend not to fund these countries because they see an increased risk."
Access to a toilet and the ability to safely use it has to be one of the easiest things for those of us with both to take for granted. Especially those of us who have always had both.
If you are able and want to make a donation to an organization addressing this need, I recommend Water.org and WaterAid.
If you unable to make a donation, there are plenty of other ways to give a shit. (I know. I'll show myself out!) Talk to people and/or do awareness raising on social media about World Toilet Day and the need for safe and accessible toilets.
Please feel welcome and encouraged to suggest in comment other ways to help on this day and every day.
Welp
[Content Note: Terrorism; drones.]
This is a screen cap I took of two juxtaposed articles on the Guardian' front page yesterday afternoon:
I don't know if anything could more plainly underline the inherent difficulty in developing an effective strategy for fighting IS, especially within a climate of, as President Obama so aptly described it yesterday, "fear and panic."
"Speeding up the fight against IS" is a great idea (for some value of "great") in a vacuum. Except, you know, none of this happens in a vacuum. It happens in places where civilians are killed, with literally every bomb. And the whole reason were fighting IS is (ostensibly) to protect civilians, so.
This whole situation is so fucked up. So tremendously and heartbreakingly fucked up.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by stucco.
Recommended Reading:
Peter: [Content Note: Descriptions of violence and terror] What It's Like to Be a Refugee: My Terror as a Displaced Child and Why I Love America for Saving Me
Elizabeth: [CN: Misogynoir] In the U.S., Black Mothers Need More Than Healthcare
TLC: [CN: Transmisogyny; racism; anti-immigrationism; carcerality] Announcing National Effort to Build Trans Immigrant Leadership as Cities Rally to #FreeChristina and All Transgender Detainees
Atrios: [CN: Warmongering] In the Beginning Were the Mushroom Clouds
Mustang Bobby: [CN: Xenophobia; guns] From the Didn't Think This Through Files
Latoya: President Obama with One Perfect Sentence on Race
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Nous avons des fleurs.
[Content Note: Terrorism.]
Oh my heart:
[If the video is removed from YouTube, you can view it here.]
Video Description: A French man who is racially API crouches down on a street near a memorial with his tiny son balanced on his knee. A reporter, who appears to be white, interviews them with a large microphone. They speak in French; the video has English subtitles.
Reporter, to the child: Do you understand what happened? Do you understand why those people did that?
Little Boy: Yes, because they're really, really mean. Bad guys are not very nice. And we have to be really careful, because we have to change houses.
Father, stroking his son's head: Oh no, don't worry. We don't need to move out. France is our home.
Little Boy: But there's bad guys, Daddy.
Father: Yes, but there's bad guys everywhere.
Little Boy: They have guns; they can shoot us because they're really, really mean, Daddy.
Father: It's okay. They might have guns, but we have flowers.
Little Boy: But flowers don't do anything. They're for—they're for...
Father, gesturing to memorial: Of course they do. Look, everyone is putting flowers.
Little Boy, looking at memorial: Yes?
Father: It's to fight against guns.
Little Boy: It's to protect?
Father: Exactly.
Little Boy: And the candles, too?
Father: It's to remember the people who are gone yesterday.
Little Boy: Ahh. The flowers and the candles are here to protect us.
Father: Yes.
They smile at each other.
Reporter, to the child: Do you feel better now?
Little Boy: Yes, I feel better.
Fatsronauts 101: Representation and Visibility
[Content Note: Fat hatred; invisibilizing; eliminationism.]
So, here's a thing one hears a lot during discussions of fat visibility—or, more accurately, the lack thereof—in popular media, especially on television and in films: "We don't want to glorify obesity."
"Glorifying obesity" is shorthand for the idea that even to merely show fat people is to give tacit approval of fatness.
This is an interesting, ahem, argument for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to):
1. Conversations about the "glorification" of violence and/or other unethical behavior are nuanced discussions in which every position tends to be treated with credibility. People who argue that, say, Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, glorified criminal behavior are generally treated to be making their arguments in good faith, even if others disagree and cite the context of the show and intent of the creators to defend their opposing view. But there is no such nuance nor the presumption of good faith in debates (such as they are) about fat visibility, despite the fact that, contrary to popular opinion, being fat is actually not a moral failing.
2. Those making and supporting this argument axiomatically conclude that to communicate approval, tacit or otherwise, of fatness is A Bad Thing.
Any pushback on that reflexive contention is immediately met with Statistical Concern about how 1/3 of the population is "obese" (never mind that the definitions of "obesity" are arbitrary and many of the people technically meeting the definition deviate significantly from the image an average person conjures when they imagine someone "obese"). It's irresponsible, so goes the argument, to "glorify obesity" when fatness is an epidemic.
People who talk about "epidemic" fatness and the "scourge of obesity" are primarily thinking about people who look like me. People who are my size and bigger. But I don't go anywhere where 1/3 of people look like me.
[Photo by Deeky.]
I am the sort of person whose body pop culture creators are afraid of "glorifying."
But a large number of the people who meet the bullshit specifications of "obesity" don't look like me. So this is a specious argument, in addition to being a profoundly indecent one.
Still, because the people making it insist on again and again taking to fainting couches while moaning about 1/3 of the population being "obese," in order to justify their shameful lack of representation and visibility of fat people, let's just take that argument at face value for a moment. On the one hand, they are communicating that we do exist by citing that garbage statistic to fearmonger, and then, on the other, communicating that we shouldn't exist by refusing to show us, despite our being 1/3 of the population.
There's a word for the belief that 1/3 of the population shouldn't exist. It's eliminationism.
The fat eliminationists employed in content creation telegraph fear of two primary things: Of a thin person looking at a fat person and thinking their body is to be emulated; and of a fat person looking at a fat person and thinking that maybe it's okay to be fat.
Naturally, these fears are ostensibly rooted in concern for people's health, but fat is not a reliable indicator of healthfulness—although fat hatred is a demonstrable cause of a lack of healthfulness.
What it really comes down to, this handwringing about "glorifying obesity," is the same old tiresome (and only reluctantly admitted) perception that fat bodies are gross.
And wouldn't it be just terrible if someone got it into their head that fat bodies aren't gross? Especially fat people. Imagine the horror of fat people feeling okay about ourselves. Why, that might give us the idea that it's okay to be fat!
The people who worry about someone seeing a fat person and—the horror!—wanting to look like them are keenly aware that the people they put in visual media are viewed as aspirational figures. Consumers of that media want to look like stars; desire to look like them. And many of us strongly yearn to see people who already look like us.
Which is why—apart from the fact that I don't imagine greater fat visibility would result in scores of thin people suddenly wanting to be fat, thanks to the pervasive fat hatred in our culture that strongly disincentivizes fatness and privileges thinness—I am not concerned about the legions of hypothetical thin people who will be inspired to fatness by fat visibility, but about the actual fat people who are desperate to see ourselves represented.
Like thin people, we want to see styled celebrities with bodies like ours to give us ideas about how to dress and style ourselves. Especially since, for fat women, being "put together" is part of the way many of us convey to a judgmental world that we are worth caring about.
The content creators know that trendsetting and emulation is a key part of their business, and yet they want to deny it to a population for whom it is exceedingly difficult to access fashion and replicate popular style, even as our being taken seriously and given service and employed frequently depends on looking "put together," even more than our thin peers.
Visibility is about survival. It's about inclusion. And it's straight-up just about getting to see fat people doing "normal" things. Fat people need to see that to validate our lives and acknowledge our very existences, and non-fat people need to see that because they are used to seeing fat characters only when fat serves as a lazy shorthand for undesirable traits.
If only these folks were half as concerned about the consequences of demonizing fat people as they are about "glorifying obesity."
Showing fat people as typical human beings isn't "glorifying obesity," but let's say that it were: If the worst possible outcome of "glorifying obesity" is more fat people, so what? Being fat, in and of itself, isn't a problem for lots and lots of fat people.
I'm fat as fuck, and I have a roof over my head, a job I love, the greatest friends, and a partner who loves and respects me. If my body weren't used as an excuse by fat haters to treat me like a pariah and a plague and an object of ridicule, I'd be doing just fucking fine.
Which, of course, is the worst fear of the fat eliminationists.
Being fat and happy, or content, is something about which I've been writing for a very long time. It's a subject that interests me a lot, for what I'm guessing are obvious reasons.
Fat people aren't supposed to be inspirational figures. We're supposed to be cautionary tales. And hoo boy are there a lot of people who take it personally when we refuse to fill that role.
A lot of people think we should be miserable, and make it their mission to make us so. Because that's easier than the hard work of finding your own confidence and contentment.
Choosing to be fat has to be okay—and so does choosing to be fat and happy.
It remains a radical act to be fat and happy in the US. If you're fat, you're not only meant to be unhappy, but deeply ashamed of yourself, projecting at all times an apologetic nature, indicative of your everlasting remorse for having wrought your monstrous self upon the world. You are certainly not meant to be bold, or assertive, or confident—and should you manage to overcome the constant drumbeat of messages that you are ugly and unsexy and have earned equally society's disdain and your own self-hatred, should you forget your place and walk into the world one day with your head held high, you are to be reminded by the cow-calls and contemptuous looks of perfect strangers that you are not supposed to have self-esteem; you don't deserve it. Being publicly fat and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery.
I choose to be visibly happy. Both because I have moments of genuine incandescent happiness in my big fat life, where I am meant to have none, and because it is my protest against the people who would deny all of us such visibility everywhere else.
Daily Dose of Cute
What? You don't sleep this way? You're so weird.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Important David Beckham News
[Video Description: Highlights from the UNICEF charity football match.]
Over the weekend, David Beckham hosted and played in a UNICEF charity football match to raise funds for underprivileged children. Two teams—Great Britain/Ireland vs. Rest of the World—played in front of a delighted sell-out crowd of 75,381.
Ex-England captain Beckham led the home team, managed by his former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson.Beckham's side won, 3-1.
Former Chelsea, Real Madrid, and AC Milan boss Carlo Ancelotti managed the world team.
Beckham was replaced by his 16-year-old son towards the end of the match, but came back on because of an injury to Sol Campbell.
"I wasn't meant to join him but Sol came off," he said. "Having Brooklyn out there was special. One of my lasting memories is winning the title and walking around with Brooklyn when he was 18 months."
Money raised from ticket sales for the match will be donated to children's charity Unicef.
"It was incredible," said Beckham. "I'm very proud of what we achieved. It's been a special day."
Beckham also made a video for UNICEF, speaking as a father to other fathers about ending violence against children:
All I want as a dad is to protect and care for my children, my most precious things. I'll do anything to shelter them from harm. Everywhere we go, and wherever we have lived, their home—our home—has always been a safe place. Tragically, for many children, having a safe home is not a reality. Every day, thousands of children experience violence in their homes. It's heartbreaking. All children deserve love and protection. Join the rest of the world's parents, all the fathers everywhere, to stamp out violence against children. Let's protect the most precious things we have—our children, our future.I'm sure there was something else...some other news...what was it again? Oh yes: David Beckham was also named People's Sexiest Man Alive.
"He's a romantic husband, a devoted dad—and he vacuums!" LOL!
Beckham said he's "very pleased to accept" the honor, but "I never feel that I'm an attractive, sexy person." If it were literally almost anyone else on the planet who looked like David Beckham saying that, I would probably guffaw, but Becks genuinely means it, the scoundrel.
"I thought I was past my sell by date but thanks to @PeopleMag for the accolade and the compliment! I always feel a little shy when receiving these Awards, though it will make my Mum happy. This one the kids will laugh at, as they see what Daddy looks like in the morning!"
Oh Becks.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; death; self-harm; description of violence] "The French police stormed an apartment in the medieval heart of the northern Paris suburb of St.-Denis before dawn on Wednesday in an attempt to find the Belgian man suspected of orchestrating the Paris terrorist attacks. Two people died in the raid, including a young woman who detonated an explosive vest, and seven people were arrested. It was not clear if the suspect was there. The raid began around 4:15 a.m. Paris time, when special police forces, backed by truckloads of soldiers, cordoned off an area near the Place Jean Jaurès, a main square in St.-Denis not far from the Stade de France, where three attackers blew themselves up on Friday. Inside the apartment, on the third floor of a building on the Rue du Corbillon, at least five suspects were holed up. One of them, the woman, opened fire and then killed herself; a man—'another terrorist,' the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said—died from a combination of gunfire and the detonation of a grenade." Fuck.
[CN: War on agency] "[A first-of-its-kind study of the prevalence of self-induced abortion from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project] found that between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women of reproductive age have attempted to end a pregnancy on their own without medical assistance. Based on a comparison with earlier data, the findings of this study suggest that the incidence of self-induced abortion may be proportionally higher in Texas than among women in the rest of the country. There are two factors behind this finding. One, a large share of Latina women live along the U.S.-Mexico border and have relatively easy access to the abortion inducing drug misoprostol, which is available over the counter in Mexico and has long been widely used by women in that country and throughout Central and South America to self-induce abortion. Two, rapidly declining access to clinic-based abortion care and other forms of reproductive health care in Texas have so increased the burden of getting timely access to care that women are giving up and turning to self-induction."
[CN: Homophobia; transphobia] Goddammit: "Indiana Republicans Introduce the Most Anti-LGBT LGBT Rights Bill Ever: The bill, which will be known as Senate Bill 100, does add 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' to the state's nondiscrimination laws as it claims to. However, it expends far more words to limit the extent of those protections, making them all but worthless to most plaintiffs. ...All religious or religious-affiliated organizations are exempt from the bill's provisions related to sexual orientation and gender identity only. ...The bill also copies from the problematic 'First Amendment Defense Act' introduced in Congress, offering broad protections for religious organizations from any consequences. It would prohibit any state government agency from taking any 'discriminatory action' against a religious organization for acting 'in accordance with a religious belief or matters of conscience regarding marriage.' ...In other words, the legislation requires the state to subsidize discrimination, funding organizations with taxpayer money even if they refuse to serve same-sex couples equally."
[CN: Refugee crisis] "Cuba has blamed US policy for a surge in migration from the Communist-run island to the United States. The Cuban foreign ministry said US laws dating back to the Cold War encouraged illegal emigration. ...Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Cuban nationals can become residents in the US much more easily than applicants from other countries. ...The statement was published as almost 2,000 Cuban migrants remained stranded on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The Cuban migrants say they want to reach the US, but Nicaragua has so far denied them passage north. ...Nicaragua said it turned back hundreds of Cuban migrants on Sunday who had crossed the Penas Blancas border post by force. The move has caused tension between neighbours Costa Rica and Nicaragua, with Costa Rica demanding a 'humanitarian corridor' be created to allow the migrants to continue their journey. The Cuban foreign ministry said that those who had left the island legally were welcome to return to Cuba if they so wished. But one of the migrants stuck at the border told the Associated Press news agency that he had no desire to return. 'We're a group of human beings trying to achieve their dream—to go to the United States,' he said."
[CN: Sexual assault; rape culture] Think, too, of this story the next time you hear someone arguing that rape survivors should be required to participate in the US criminal justice system: "A Cross County judge is accused of soliciting sex from offenders in his court in exchange for sentence reductions, the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission said."
[CN: Sexual assault; rape culture] "Four women sued Michigan State University on Wednesday for mishandling their sexual assault reports, according to a lawsuit first obtained by BuzzFeed News, saying the school's investigations dragged on for so long that they violated the federal gender equality law known as Title IX." They are really brave, and I dread the shit they're going to have to navigate to do this very important thing.
Welp: "Ben Carson's remarks on foreign policy have repeatedly raised questions about his grasp of the subject, but never more seriously than in the past week, when he wrongly asserted that China had intervened militarily in Syria and then failed, on national television, to name the countries he would call on to form a coalition to fight the Islamic State. Faced with increasing scrutiny about whether Mr. Carson, who leads in some Republican presidential polls, was capable of leading American foreign policy, two of his top advisers said in interviews that he had struggled to master the intricacies of the Middle East and national security and that intense tutoring was having little effect."
[CN: Islamophobia] This fucking guy: "The United States will have 'absolutely no choice' but to close down some mosques where 'some bad things are happening,' Donald Trump said in a recent interview, explaining his rationale for doing so. 'Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it. A lot of people understand it. We're going to have no choice,' the Republican presidential said in an interview from Trump Tower on Fox News' Hannity on Tuesday night."
Meanwhile: "Republican regulars, veterans of conventional politics, are pondering the unthinkable: What if neither Donald Trump nor Ben Carson fades? Which would be a stronger candidate? Would either govern if he won? ...Ralph Reed, the leading political strategist of the religious right, said there's one other candidate who is "well-suited" to inherit both of those constituencies: Texas Senator Ted Cruz. That's scant solace for establishment Republicans."
Here are some famous men giving responses to being asked if they are feminists. Spoiler Alert: Some of them are better than others!
Tiny Caterpillar Resting in a Cozy Flower Bed!
[CN: Moving gifs at link] And finally! "The 31 Most Cat Things to Ever Happen." Haha!
Quote of the Day
President Obama: These are the same folks often times who've suggested that they're so tough that, uh, just talkin' to Putin or staring down ISIL or using some additional rhetoric somehow's gonna solve the problems out there. But apparently they're scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion. First they were worried about the press being too tough on 'em during debates; now they're worried about three-year-old orphans. That doesn't sound very tough to me.Obama preceded these comments by saying: "We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic. We don't make good decisions if it's based on hysteria or an exaggeration of risks. When individuals say we should have a religious test, and that only Christians, proven Christians, should be admitted, that's offensive. I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric that's been coming out of here in the course of this debate. ISIL seeks to exploit the idea that there's war between Islam and the West, and when you start seeing individuals in positions of responsibility suggesting Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims who are in a war-torn land, that feeds the ISIL narrative. It's counterproductive. And it needs to stop."
[edit] They've been playing on fear in order to try to score political points. Or to advance their [inaudible due to audio glitch]. And it's irresponsible. And it's contrary to who we are. And it needs to stop, because the world is watching.
Fuck yeah. Thank you, Mr. President.
And Then There Were 14
Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has dropped out of the presidential race, presumably to spend more time with his bigotry.
Globspeed, sir! You were unremarkably terrible in a field of horrible candidates, and I can't wait to keep not caring about your presidential ambitions. Adieu.
On the Boko Haram Attack in Nigeria
[Content Note: Terrorism; death.]
Yesterday, another explosive device placed in a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola detonated, killing at least 32 people and wounding at least 80 others.
The Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has not yet claimed responsibility, but they will. Detonating bombs in markets is one of Boko Haram's signature strategies, which they use in order to maximize harm, death, and devastation.
If someone in the West has heard of Boko Haram at all, it is probably in association with their mass kidnapping of girls. But they routinely terrorize northern Nigeria and bordering areas with bombings, mass shootings, kidnappings, and associated war crimes. Though they are a distinct group from IS, they have pledged their fealty to the better-known group: "The suspected perpetrators, Boko Haram, have pledged allegiance to Islamic State and killed thousands of people in the northeastern part of the country during the last six years. The militant group is fighting for a state that would strictly adhere to Sharia law."
Their terrorist attacks were also, over the course of last year, more deadly than IS' terrorist attacks, although IS killed many more people in combat:
Fatalities from terrorism are at a record high now with just two groups, Boko Haram and Islamic State responsible for half of them, a new report showed. The Nigerian militants kill more people than their Iraqi-Syrian allies.Over the past year and a half, I have covered 30 separate attacks and multiple kidnappings by Boko Haram. I have noted the disparity in the coverage between the coverage of terrorist attacks in the West and the terrorism being perpetrated by Boko Haram, at one point observing that a bombing in which at least 17 people were killed warranted only two sentences from Reuters, and that was still more that most major news outlets gave it.
Two terrorist groups were responsible for over a half of the killings in 2014 – Nigeria-based Boko Haram and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), which aims to expand its influence from the powerbase in Iraq and Syria globally. Together they were responsible for 51 percent of all global fatalities in 2014 claimed by any group, and almost 40 percent of all fatalities, according to the Global Terrorism Index published by the Institute for Economic and Peace (IEP).
The Nigerian jihadists, who pledged allegiance to IS in March 2015, killed more people than their fellow Islamists, claiming 6,644 lives compared to 6,073. Nigeria accordingly experienced a staggering 300 percent rise in terrorism deaths in 2014, although other militant groups take partial blame for the increase. In particular the Fulani militants killed 1,229 in Nigeria.
IS killed more people in combat than in acts of terrorism in 2014. It was responsible for at least 20,000 battlefield deaths over the year in clashes with various state and non-state combatants.
Like IS, Boko Haram's primarily targets and victims are other Muslims. They have killed thousands of people, injured thousands of people, kidnapped thousands of people, and displaced thousands of people.
And their latest attack, in which dozens died and scores were injured, has received virtually no news coverage in the mainstream Western media.
Because they are of no imminent risk to "us."
Because they explicitly target the women and children of a population mostly comprised of other black Muslims.
I feel very angry and very helpless to do anything meaningful in support of the Nigerian and neighboring people being terrorized on a daily basis by this despicable lot. I don't know what the US government, or any other government, should do to help; how to intervene or whether to intervene at all.
All I know is that not paying attention, not caring, abets Boko Haram. They flourish in a vacuum of concern.
Nigerians under siege have asked us to raise awareness. To talk about the grievous harm being done to them.
It is not enough, but it is what I can do: I am witnessing what is happening. I see what Boko Haram is doing. I am writing and talking about it. I take up space in solidarity with the people they terrorize, because their lives matter.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Kathy_A: "Is there something that your family members/friends still tease you about years later? Do you wish they would just drop it, or not?"
Yes
[Content Note: War on agency. NB: Not only women need access to oral contraceptives.]
The Guttmacher Institute's Sneha Barot examines "Moving Oral Contraceptives to Over-the-Counter Status." I'm not even going to excerpt it. Just go read the whole thing.
I will say once again: The Guttmacher Institute is a national treasure.
"His heroism transcended his own life to save others."
[Content Note: Terrorism; death; Islamophobia; description of violence.]
While literally every Republican candidate is spewing vile hogwash trying to convince us that there might be terrorists hidden among the refugees, let us consider that among the refugees will definitely be people like Adel Termos, who sacrified his own life to save many others from a terrorist:
The day before the horrific massacre in central Paris left the world reeling, two attacks during rush hour in Lebanon's capital city killed 45 and wounded more than 200 others.When I hear people fearmongering about refugees by disgorging cynical rhetoricals about who might become my neighbor, I think of Adel Termos. I expect we'd all be lucky to have a neighbor like him.
If not for the heroic actions of one man, the death toll would have been much higher. And now, days later, his heroism is being recognized.
Adel Termos was walking in an open-air market with his daughter, according to reports, when the first suicide bomber detonated his explosives. Amid the instant chaos, Termos spotted the second bomber preparing to blow himself up, and made the quick decision to tackle him to the ground. The bomb went off, killing Termos, but saving countless others, including his daughter.
"There are many, many families, hundreds probably, who owe their completeness to his sacrifice," Elie Fares, a blogger and physician in Beirut, told Public Radio International in an interview last week.
"In a way, Adel Termos broke human nature of self-preservation. His heroism transcended his own life to save others," Fares told The Washington Post in an e-mail Monday. "To make that kind of decision in a split second, to decide that you'd rather save hundreds than to go back home to your family, to decide that the collective lives of those around you are more important than your own is something that I think no one will ever understand."
I'm not suggesting, of course, that every refugee who comes to the States would—or should—make such a tremendous sacrifice on behalf of others. Nor that one needs to earn a place as my neighbor with heroism.
My point is only this: To continually imply that refugees may be terrorists, with zero credible evidence, at the expense of acknowledging that refugees are a diverse population of all sorts of people, many of whom may be extraordinary people, is shit. Utter shit.
There are more decent people on this planet than there are terrorists. Why anyone would ever want to pretend otherwise is beyond me.
I get that there's a political value to such a reprehensible pretense. I just don't understand, on a visceral level, why people choose to engage in politicking that diminishes their own humanity by requiring them to deny the humanity in others.
Shaker Gourmet
Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
The Walking Thread
[Content Note: Spoilers are lurching around undeadly herein.]
^ The look on my face throughout this entire episode.
Did you think we were going to find out what happened to Glenn this week? HAHAHAHAHA OF COURSE NOT! There was no way we were going to find out what happened to Glenn last week, or the week before that, or this week! And we're probably not going to find out next week, either, because THIS FUCKING SHOW.
There has been a lot of discussion about WHO IS THE VOICE on the other end of radio at the end of the episode, weakly saying, "Help." Lots of people think it's Glenn, but the show says it's not Glenn! Some people are upset that it isn't Glenn, and some people are upset that it might be Glenn, because they are going to be SO MAD if Glenn isn't really dead and they've been jerked around this whole time. Whoooooops!
Basically everything you need to know about how shitty this show is can be summed up by the fact that its fans are going to be angry if one of the favorite characters hasn't died, just because they're so desperate for something interesting to happen and for the writers not to betray their loyalty and investment yet again.
Anyway! Long story short: We still don't know what happened to Glenn, three episodes after he was supposedly devoured by zombies.
This was another filler episode, which was obviously designed just to drag out that lousy cliffhanger even longer, because there was literally no other point. IT WAS SO FUCKING BORING AND NOTHING HAPPENED.
Sure, some stuff happened, but it was nothing that anyone could possibly really care about, because it's all stuff we've seen fully eleventy biebillion times before, because this show is repetitive as hell!
Sgt. Redbull and Sasha in a car, and Daryl on a motorbike, still leading the zombie march per Grimes' Hot Shit Zombie Relocation Plan, get shot at and separated.
Daryl runs into some extras from The O.C. and they clunk him over the head and take him hostage because they don't trust him, but then he ends up saving them, and they can't even believe good people like him still exist, but then they steal his crossbow and abandon him anyway.
Sgt. Redbull and Sasha end up in an office complex, and there is so much amazing and totally trenchant and definitely not retreaded from literally every previous episode exploration about whether they want to succumb to the zombiepocalypse or survive.
The only thing even worth mentioning from the whole damn episode is this exchange between Sgt. Redbull and Sasha:
Sgt. Redbull: I like the way you call bullshit, Sasha. I believe I'd like to get to know you a whole lot better.A man can tell what a woman wants. Better than she can, even! If you don't believe me, check page 87 in Rick Grimes' Big Leatherbound Book of Things Men Know.
Sasha: That one of your plays? What makes you think I want that?
Sgt. Redbull: A man can tell.
Next week: More of this garbage.
Daily Dose of Cute
These Dorito ears aren't going to persuade me to get a treat.
Oh who am I kidding. Of course they are!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; war] Well fuck: "President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up a Russian airliner over Egypt and intensified air strikes against militants in Syria, after the Kremlin concluded a bomb had destroyed the plane last month, killing 224 people. Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes. 'We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them,' Putin said of the plane bombers at a somber Kremlin meeting broadcast on Tuesday. The FSB security service swiftly announced a $50 million bounty in a global manhunt for the bombers." It's impossible to overstate how miserable terrorists are making life for Syrian civilians.
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Jamar Clark was taken off life support last night and died. My condolences to his family, friends, and community. Also last night: "More than 50 people were arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest that shut down I-94W in Minneapolis for over two hours. ...At one point a driver nearly hit some of the protesters. Other drivers got into arguments with protesters as the crowd marched down an I-94 ramp. Eventually, police gave the crowd a 15-minute warning calling the assembly unlawful. They then began arresting those who refused to leave."
[CN: Police brutality; sexual violence; misogynoir] Kanya D'Almeida on the Holtzclaw trial: "When local activists learned last August that a 27-year-old Oklahoma City police officer had been arrested on 16 charges of sexual assault against multiple Black women, they expected the case to garner national headlines. ...But as Daniel Holtzclaw's trial entered its third week Monday, with over two dozen out of an estimated 175 witnesses for the prosecution having testified so far, residents like [Grace Franklin, co-founder of OKC Artists for Justice] are still waiting for the story to grab nationwide attention. Advocates who've been closely following the case say the lack of media coverage reveals a pattern erasing the specific experiences of Black women from conversations around race and police brutality, which the Black Lives Matter movement propelled into national prominence last year." Again I will note that Holtzclaw carefully and deliberately chose victims he believed no one would care about or believe. And the yawning indifference to his trial rewards his cynical exploitation of the particularly vulnerable black women he assaulted.
Welp: "The costs of food, gasoline, shelter, and medical care rose last month, yet inflation continues to run at low levels ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting in December to consider raising short-term interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. ...Much of the inflation within the economy stems from higher rents and home values. ...Fed officials have been carefully monitoring the economy for an upturn in inflation as part of its plan to eventually raise short-term interest rates from historic lows."
No surprises here: PRRI's annual "American Values Survey" results are out, and "Strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans name health care (71% and 61%, respectively) and jobs and unemployment (66% and 59%, respectively) as critical issues. However, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to name the cost of education (62% vs. 33% respectively) and the growing gap between the rich and the poor (62% vs. 29%, respectively) as critical issues. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to name terrorism (79% vs. 53%, respectively) and immigration (59% vs. 43%, respectively) as critical issues." Of course.
[CN: Climate change] This is pretty terrifying: "Runoff from snowmelt is regarded as a vital water source for people and ecosystems throughout the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Numerous studies point to the threat global warming poses to the timing and magnitude of snow accumulation and melt. ...Using a multi-model ensemble of climate change projections, we find that these basins—which together have a present population of ~2 billion people—are exposed to a 67% risk of decreased snow supply this coming century."
Whut: Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is the laugh-crying emoji. Okay.
Do you want to hear Adele's second single "When We Were Young" in its entirety? Well, here you go!
And finally! All the blubs forever: "Marine Corps Veteran Frank Giarmida has a new best friend. He was surprised with the gift of a therapy dog, while on the field at MetLife Stadium during a Giants game. All of this was in an effort to thank Giarmida for his service in the Iraq War. 'I see the dog come out and I'm looking at the screen, and I see a dog and I'm looking around and I didn't even hear what the commentator said anymore,' Giarmida said. 'The last 10 years have been a struggle. Six months ago, I recently lost my fiance to a brain aneurysm. So this service dog is going to do a lot for me. ...This is going to be my best friend. I need a friend." ♥
