Reading Melissa's post on the girl who's not racist brought up something that has probably been said a non-nillion times, but that I think should be repeated at least as often as the "make sure your seat back and tray-tables are in their upright and locked positions" speech:
If, like me, you grew up in America (and a majority of other countries/cultures on the planet), there is a 99.99999999999% probability that you are too:
Racist
Sexist
Classist
Looksist
Culturist
Sexual Orientationist
I am all of these things. It's the soup I was simmered in, from the moment this body drew breath.
When I figured out (age 12) that I was queer, I'd never met a queer (that I knew of), and I had never heard an outright condemnation of homosexuality (this was not a word I had EVER heard, in fact) -- still -- no one had to tell me that this was not something I should shout from the top of the monkey-bars at recess.
I had been so thoroughly marinated in the atmosphere of institutionalized homophobia that I knew "instinctively" that this was something I should keep to myself, and I began compensatory action immediately -- like feigning interest in a boy (who, as it turns out, is probably also queer) .
The reason that I think this reminder bears another nonillion repetitions is that, until I acknowledge my "-isms" and "phobias" (externalized or internalized), I don't have a snow-ball's chance in hell of changing them -- because the sneaky little privilege super-hero in my head will keep chanting "That's not me! I'm not like that!"
Take heart: I don't think I'm a "bad" person because I have these "-isms" -- nor do I think you're a "bad" person because you (probably -- like 99.99...% probably) have them.
However, I think I'll be a stupid and ineffective human-rights proponent if I don't realize that I have them, and begin to deal with them.
My internalized homophobia shows up every time I think, however briefly, about whether or not it's safe for me to kiss my girlfriend in the grocery line.
My internalized racism shows up every time I see a new resident in my tiny, whiter-than-white town and notice that they're a person of color, so I give them an extra-wide smile to make sure that they know I welcome them.
My internalized sexism shows up every time I assume that a woman is going to understand my perspective just because she's a woman.
And on, and on, and on. Tiny little indicators, every day, that these "entrainments" are still there in me, and that means I need to deal with them.
For me, it's not enough to pat myself on the back and feel good that I've dealt with some of these -isms in myself more than other people that I know . . . excuse me, I think I have something stuck in my throat . . . uh-uhm . . . *my friend who I really like but who makes subtly misogynist and racist comments daily* . . . uh-uhm . . . I have to keep bringing these things to my awareness and owning them -- I have to be willing to have others assist me in bringing them to my awareness -- or I will never really succeed in transforming them.
The moment I realize that I am entertaining and/or practicing subtle or overt racism, sexism, classism, etc. -- I actually become empowered to view these things as actions that I take, rather than something that I am.
So in support of the concept: "Please secure your own mask before assisting others", I'll offer this paradoxical statement:
The moment you realize you're a racist/sexist/sizeist(substitute your _______-ist here), you actually have a real shot at moving away from that identity.
(Update: -- 'Liss says it way more poetically here: "Though all of us, sans rigorous philosophical exertion, are hapless conduits for every limiting and oppressive archetype upon which the patriarchy depends, conveying the bars of our own cages, very few of us are its unconstrained beneficiaries.")
If You Don't Claim It, It's Not Yours to Change
Fierce
[This is an update of an old post, which is relevant again, I'm afraid.]
I was standing in front of a full-length mirror with my leg stretched out, modeling at its end for my own consumption the left half of a pair of kelly green steel-toed Doc Martens knee-highs I had just bought, in spite of their outrageous price tag. "Girl, those boots are hot!" came the voice from beside me. This was St. Nate of the Perfectly Shaped Eyebrows, my coworker and friend, who would, one day, find himself at my parents' house in the suburbs racing through their kitchen as I screeched, "Get the baking soda!" to help put out a fire I'd started on their deck with the grill. But today he was admiring my boots. And admiring me.
"God damn, look at you!" He pulled my shirt from the back so it clung to my form. This was not a look I felt was particularly good for me, even in those thinner days, and I pushed his hands away, squirming and frowning at myself in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow and frowned back, then turned me around by the shoulders, away from the mirror.
"Bitch, be fierce…"
Nate was one of many people who fall under the "T" in LGBT who have been important to me in one way or another, many of whom have played vital roles in helping me understand and appreciate my queer-brained self, and sort out what it means for me to be a woman. This is, quite obviously, no coincidence. Being myself a person who is, like many non-trans feminists and queers, uncomfortable with, and thusly constantly challenging, the expectations imposed on my sex and gender, I have found it valuable (and, in my personal experience, inevitable) to engage with Ts as part of divining my own self-definition. Which is to say nothing of simple and precious friendships.
The thing about getting together with a group of friends which includes straight, gay, bi, asexual, and trans men and women is that you're almost guaranteed to have every gender variation in the room and thusly no easily divided gender groups. The group may split into smaller clusters that talk about kids, or sports, or politics, or film, but the divisions aren't drawn by sex; the ladies-in-the-kitchen, gents-watching-the-game sort of thing is totally, completely, hilariously inoperable. And when you have a group of friends like that, you tend to forget that there are people who don't believe a man can learn something about being a man from a woman, or a woman can learn something about being a woman from a man—a man who loves men same as you, or a man who used to be a biological woman, or just a man in a dress, like St. Nate.
And when you have a group of friends who—irrespective of individual sex, gender, or sexual orientation—take it as read that all we gender-queer lot are in this together, you tend to forget that there are some people who you'd presume to get that, but don't.
(Although in this particular case, perhaps we shouldn't be terribly surprised.)
Realistically, the breadth of allies in a comprehensive challenge to the patriarchy is vast and varied. Though all of us, sans rigorous philosophical exertion, are hapless conduits for every limiting and oppressive archetype upon which the patriarchy depends, conveying the bars of our own cages, very few of us are its unconstrained beneficiaries. Even the average straight, white, middle class American man exchanges privilege for severe limitations on his personal expression and emotional life—and he is encouraged never to examine that devastating trade-off too closely, lest the veneer on the alleged bargain prove thin enough through which to see. We all serve the same callous master, and there's little to celebrate in being the favored slave—especially compared to a life of freedom.
It is foolish to believe that there is more feminist, gender-queer cisgendered straight women, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and the Ts don't all have in common culturally and politically than that which we do, given the particular restraints and prejudices of the patriarchal structure and its rigid notions of sex, gender, and sexuality conveyed in all its aspects. We struggle to achieve and/or maintain, to varying degrees, autonomy over our own bodies, and, crucially, freedom of choice with regard to what we want to do with those bodies. Life- and identity-changing events hang in the balance for us all—parenting, marriage, gender reassignment, being legally able to keep a job in spite of prejudice.
The only question worth asking is how willing any of us are to secure rights for some of us at the expense of rights for the rest. Because we are in this thing together.
We are natural allies. We must be fierce together.
…Nate stood back and looked at me. "The hair, the fucking indigo eyes—I'd kill for those eyes!—the cheekbones, the tits—my god, those tits!—the ass, the 'tude…no one brings the 'tude like you do. Honey, you've got it."
So I did. I had a lot of other stuff, too, that Nate left out—things known as "flaws." But fuck it, I thought, as I turned back to the mirror. Since when has darkness meant there's no such thing as light? I looked at myself again not through a prism of external expectation, but with my eyes alone. The crushing weight of Everyone Else's Opinion was gone. I felt beautiful—not in a slamming-dress-and-perfectly-executed-hair-and-make-up way, which is itself a distinct kind of allure to which I am particularly ill-suited, being unfit in both manner and form for couture, but in a je ne sais quoi way, compared to no standard or expectation, and offering as its only alternative an absence of the beauty specific to me.
I had what I had, whatever it was, and that was that. Anyone who wanted me to measure up to a measuring stick I hadn't given them was going to be shit out of luck and sorely disappointed.
And so they are still.
Bush to Kids: Grow Up!
Some people are upset that President Bush has vetoed the bill expanding State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Even Republicans are worried that the party will be seen as cruel and uncaring, an impression that was reinforced when William Kristol defended the veto by saying, "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the President's willing to do something bad for the kids." But I hope Republicans will back President Bush's get-tough policies and sustain his veto, even if the party is seen as anti-children. President Bush's father once said, "Message: I care." But his son is a different, bolder man. "Message: Grow up!" he is telling our nation's youth with his veto and it's about time someone did.
President Bush is always thinking about the future. He knows that however the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are viewed now, history will vindicate him after he is dead. But the President is deeply concerned about the future generations who will fight the wars he has bequeathed them. While our enemies are preparing their youth to fight future jihads, we are lagging behind, pampering our kids and conditioning them to depend on the government. With this veto the President has stood up to Congress' plans to turn more of our children into wards of the state by expanding SCHIP and started weaning them off of government dependence. Toughening up our children will make sure they are up to the task of fighting the wars of the future.
We can only hope it is not too late to save our spoiled little brats. The Children's Health Insurance Program is already just giving away health care for free to millions of children, but Congress and many states are trying to turn more of our kids into little welfare princes and princesses. Luckily, the Bush Administration has stepped in and not only resisted efforts to increase the program but has created a new set of stiff rules that will throw millions of children out of the government giveaway program. President Bush, who is a thinker, is opposed to the program on "philosophical grounds, " he says. "When you expand eligibility," Bush said, "you're really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government." If children really want health care so badly, the President has suggested, they can always go to hospital emergency rooms.
Sure, a few disease-ridden children whose parents can't afford to take them to the doctor will spread their illnesses to other children in school. But that's why we have home-schooling and expensive private schools that filter out those who cannot afford health care. Parents are free to decide if they want to make the extra effort or spend the extra money to keep their kids safe. With socialized medicine, parents wouldn't have any choice at all.
Liberals believe that if they recruit our children at a young age to the idea that health care should be free that will make it a lot easier to impose socialized medicine on us in the future. But President Bush wants children to learn that they cannot just run to the doctor every time they have a sore throat or runny nose or want plastic surgery because all their friends are doing it and not have to pay for it. It's better they learn now that the reason we have the best health care in the world is that we don't just give it away to anyone. Imagine how unprepared our children would be when they grow up and discover that many adults don't get to have any health care at all.
Health care is just one area where the President is trying to nip the prepubescent culture of dependence in the bud. He has also resisted efforts to tighten rules on imports from China, which would increase government red tape and threaten our market economy, but more importantly, would condition children to believe that they can depend on the government to protect them from all the bad stuff that's out there. "The overall philosophy is regulations are bad and they are too large a cost for industry, and the market will take care of it," explained Rick Melberth, director of regulatory policy at OMBWatch. "That's been the philosophy of the Bush administration." The Bush Administration has resisted efforts to increase inspections of toys by hiring more inspectors and running up government deficits and to make businesses more unprofitable by subjecting them to more red tape.
The market, in fact, has done a fine job of taking care of recent glitches like the discovery that Mattel toys manufactured in China contained lead paint. Mattel responded exactly as a company should in a free-market economy. It listened to parents who complained that its toys could kill their children and after considering their objections, launched a massive recall of toys featuring Sesame Street characters like Thomas the Train and Dora the Explorer. That is the way capitalism works.
But advocates of government red tape claim Mattel's efforts are not enough. They want inefficient government bureaucrats to get involved instead of letting industries police themselves. They point out that 80% of toys are now made in China and that few of these toys are ever inspected. But how many parents want to be faced the prospect of telling their children that there will be no toys for Christmas because government red tape has made them too expensive or caused severe shortages?
We need to teach our children at a young age what it means to live in a free market economy, not turn them into budding little Marxists dependent on the nanny state. Of course, there will be some collateral damage, like the four-year-old boy who died of lead poisoning after swallowing a metal charm that came with Reebok shoes that contained 90% lead. That is the price we pay for being free. No one is too young to learn to take responsibility for their own well-being. This child was not forced by anyone to swallow his toy. It was a decision he made on his own and he paid the consequences for it. The silver lining in his tragic death is that other children will be a little bit more careful about swallowing their toys. Telling children that they can just swallow anything and not worry about the consequences because the government will protect them is a terrible lesson to teach. It will just turn them into drug addicts and overeaters later in life.
The lessons the President is teaching our children will last a lifetime. For example, some of our kids learned a valuable civics lesson when a group of them came to the White House pulling little red wagons and hauling mail bags full of petitions asking him not to veto the SCHIP legislation and were turned away at the gate. The fact that a majority of Americans support this legislation and it was passed by both houses of Congress made as little difference to the President as the fact that most Americans want us out of Iraq. Once a President has been elected by the people, the Constitution doesn't require him to listen to them. If voters who elected Democrats to get us out of the War in Iraq had learned this lesson sooner, they might not be so disappointed and disillusioned now.
Nevertheless, some nervous Republicans are worried that going after children may not be the best way to win the 2008 election. But children, of course, like many adults, don't vote. And when adults who do vote get the facts and compare the tough, highly disciplined children of the Middle East, who are being transformed into little jihadists and suicide bombers, with the caterwauling little monsters you can see in any American shopping center or urban liberal enclave, they will see that the President is right. Instead of running away from the President on this issue, I hope Republicans not only stick to their guns but make it the centerpiece of their campaign in 2008.
If the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the recalls of pet food have taught us anything it is that government cannot save us from ourselves. If people had not depended on FEMA to bail them out in New Orleans or believed that the FDA was making sure pet food was safe, then many lives might have been saved. By putting competent people in positions of power in government agencies, the Clinton Administration fooled people into thinking that government could look out for them. President Bush, however, has forced Americans to become more self-reliant. The people of New Orleans and many pet owners have already learned this important lesson. Now President Bush is bringing his message of tough love to our nation's children. Those children who have not perished from stupidly eating their toys or succumbed to preventable illnesses will be stronger because of his policies and they will thank him if they manage to become adults.
Crossposted at Jon Swift
So, there's this bear, right?
And it's walking along the Rainbow Bridge on Highway 40 near Truckee, CA when, all of a sudden, at least two cars pass at once, freaking it the hell out. The panic-stricken bear then evidently jumps over the bridge railing to avoid the cars.
"WTP? I didn't think this through…"
Local officials make a serious assessment of the bear's predicament and say, "Eh." But when they return the next day to find the bear sleeping on the bridge…
"Zzzzzzzzzzzzz."
…they jump into action! And only a mere 20 hours or so after the beastie has first become stranded, a plan is hatched to string an Army surplus net beneath the bridge…
"ZOMG. WTF is tha— Zzzzzzzzz."
…tranquilize the bear, wait for it to become unconscious, then use a big pole to push it into the net!
"Mmph, blurgh. Where am I? Who'sat? Wha? Is it spring?"
Voila! Mission accomplished. Operation Bear Rescue is a total success, and one fuzzy brown trouble-maker is released onto the floor of the ravine below the bridge, free once again to pursue salmon and attend various speaking engagements about preventing forest fires.
"I meant to do that."
Get Him on the Ballot, Brad
In an interview with Parade magazine—which, if you're anything like me, you associate with the Sunday paper and Howard Huge—Brad Pitt demonstrates he's got slightly more than the average celebrity going on upstairs. Among discussing his thoughts on global charity work, losing his religion, and his family, he's asked about running for public office:
I suggest that he run for political office.Ha. I agree! Because no one cares if Ben Affleck stops making films, but Babel and Syriana were good!
"Oh, my God!" Pitt says in surprise. "I never thought about it. I have no desire at this point. Maybe I serve better by not going through that door." He laughs. "George should do it!" he says, offering up pal Clooney. "He'd be quite good. I think Ben Affleck should run."
Also because Affleck's way more interesting a regular dude than he is a good actor.
Quote of the Day
"We welcome anyone who truly believes in civil rights to work along with us in the march toward all citizens being truly equal in the eyes of the law and the world. But maybe with a little less of the dude-that-dude-is-kissing-a-dude angle."—Diana at Boystowners (a must-read for LGBTQ + allied Chicagoans) on Adam Sandler's recent statement that "he would like to work alongside gay-rights groups after starring in this year's I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."
Bush: Proud To Be C (and rich)
I know this graphic, lovingly crafted by Liss, is producing a reaction anywhere from blank stares to spit-takes. Let me explain.
I am generally a fairly easy going guy. Even when talking about big issues where government people have done wrong, yes I can get snarky but I try to analyze things and not get too carried away. However, my temper really flies through the roof at stupid and inconsequential things, which would explain my hatred of Inhofe. Mrs. Cowboy's matron of honor so much as hinted towards this in her speech at the wedding, saying that I'm basically a simmering volcano. From that, I decided that my ranting identity shall be known as Volcanus Eruptus. I know it's no Dirk Diggler, but that's what I came up with, so deal. Now that the volcano's out of the bag, let's get busy.
Today's rant has to do with specific sections of Bush's speech yesterday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This speech was pure gold, as there is really so much to choose from. I'll just deal with a couple that particularly simmer the volcano.I really appreciate the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce for giving me an opportunity to explain why I have made some of the [WRONG] decisions I have made. My job is a [WRONG] decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of [WRONG] decisions. And it's important for me to have an opportunity to speak to you and others who would be listening about the basis on which I have made [WRONG] decisions, to explain the philosophy behind some of the [WRONG] decisions I have made.
Seriously, WTF?! Why, oh why, does this guy get off so much on doing something that every living being does every fucking day? Even cells make a decision on whether or not to fucking divide! But nooooo.. The Decider thinks he's fucking Caesar, and that the sum total of Caesar's job (and hence his own) is showing either thumbs up or thumbs down all day. 
Sorry, but I think your job goes a little beyond deciding, and I don't mean giving back rubs to other heads of state. But hey, who am I to lecture someone who is so god damned insecure around smart people that he has to keep reminding everyone what a shitty student he was:There's a lot of action in Washington, D.C., believe me, and I've got a lot of [WRONG] decisions to make. And so I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. (Laughter.) And I want to remind you who the advisor is and who the President is. (Laughter.) I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, Mr. President, here's what's on my mind. And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device [sic], I decide, you know, I say, this is what we're going to do. And it's "yes, sir, Mr. President." And then we get after it, implement policy.
You're right, we have heard these very lines before. For some reason, Bush still feels that he needs to rub this fact into Condi's face and everyone else's face who is actually intelligent. Is it that he's still intimidated by smart people and has the need to remind them that intellect will not get you everywhere, or is he really that proud to be a C student?
You might recall that he told a bunch of C student graduates that "you too can be President of the United States," as if any C student in this country could ever become President. We know that's not true for a second, except in one instance: You come from a posh and privileged background and can get away with getting drunk and snorting coke through college. That's what he is really proud of. He's proud of the fact that life has come easy to him and that he gets to play world leader while other people work for a living. Call it frat boy, call it spoiled. Either way, this is who is leading our country. Take a good look, folks, even you wingers. You're looking at a guy who has proven that he doesn't give a shit about education, No Child Left Behind my fucking arse. It's all about just getting by and knowing the right people who have money. Of course, we already knew that golden rule, but there's no reason to have a President who flaunts that ideal. If we can't have a leader who actually got higher than a B average, then maybe we can at least have a leader that knows how to inspire people to do better than him/her. That's what a leader does - fucking LEAD. Real leaders don't rub it in people's faces and revel over how easy their life is. I'm reminded of Bill Murray's speech in the beginning of Rushmore:Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you're going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh for the love of…
I just read this shit about a coming out twist in a gay-bashing murder trial and it made my Afro hurt.
The defendant allegedly targeted the victim because he was gay and the horror of that is bad enough, but this motherfucker is now fighting the hate crime charge by claiming he “could be a homosexual” his damn self. His logic being that because he “could be a homosexual” he can’t possibly hate gays and not hating gays means that he did not pick the victim out and murder him because that victim was gay.
Blink.
The sad thing is that anti-gay behavior is more often than not an expression of self-hatred. One need only look at anti-gay public figures to find examples of that.
Anyhoo, legal analysts took a long healthy piss in the defendant’s Corn Flakes by pointing out that the law only requires that the accused have singled out a person for a violent act because of some belief or stereotype about that person's ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability or sexual orientation.
So it’s likely that the defendant opened his closet door to reveal his prison cell.
Drunky the Republican Elephant
The GOP has unveiled its logo for the 2008 Republican Convention, and it's, um, interesting:
Quips Wonkette: "[I]t's a sort of zonked-out rampaging blue elephant—about to crush 2008 itself beneath its gigantic front legs and staring in starry-eyed horror at its bland sans-serif cage."
Yes. Well, obviously the poor dear has had too much marula fruit and is out of its head. Someone get it to rehab before it starts blowing a gay hooker and then has to announce it's found Jesus in a tearful public apology.
[H/Ts to Blogenfreude for the logo and Chemist for the video link.]
"I'm not a racist."
At left is a video via The Smoking Gun of a group of white Louisiana college students who have used mud to deck themselves out in blackface so they can "hilariously" reenact the Jena 6 assault.
[The video and photos] were posted to the Facebook page of Kristy Smith, a freshman nursing student. The album of images was entitled "The Jena 6 on the River." In the video, three students with mud smeared across their bodies stomp on a fourth student, while two of the participants are heard to say, "Jena 6." One man can also be heard saying, "Niggers put the noose on."Yeah, I'll bet. That she can say she loves her black friends "to death" without a trace of irony in the midst of defending her participation in a reenactment of violent racism is just astounding.
After the video and photos on Smith's page were discovered by fellow students, she removed the material and made her Facebook page private. Smith, who did not respond to a TSG e-mail sent to her school address, apologized for the images in several recent Facebook postings. "We were just playin n the mud and it got out of hand. I promise i'm not racist. i have just as many black friends as i do white. And i love them to death," she wrote.
Naturally, when her moving testament to diversity failed to convince people that she isn't a racist, Smith later added a message noting that they'd been drinking and things "got a lil out of hand," that's all. She subsequently removed the video and photos from her Facebook profile, but not before another student had grabbed them.
Pam, who gets the hat tip, makes a very important point about Smith's (very familiar) reaction to this incident being made public.
The bottom line is that the first order of business was for Smith to declare she's not racist. That label is clearly radioactive to most people, so much so that they can simply cannot own the fact that they engaged in racist behavior. In their minds they rationalize away such incidents because a real racist burns a cross on someone's lawn, or ties a black man to the back of a truck and drags him until his limbs fall off.Spot on. Sometimes it's as subtle (but nefarious) as telling a mysteriously uninteresting anecdote that would have no purpose if the person at its center wasn't of another race. And sometimes it's as obvious (and pernicious) as writing a very public slavery apologia. Back to Pam:
...[W]e can't get very far if people cannot even admit that racism is still part of our culture, and that one can engage in negative race-based thinking or behavior without putting a Klan hood on.
Look at Michael Richards. One of the striking things about his unhinged apology on Letterman last year, after appearing onstate at a comedy club and going on an unhinged rant because of black heckler in the audience was that he felt compelled to say he wasn't racist.Right. But no one wants to admit that they've got a problem, even though all of us, failing extraordinary effort to examine the racist narratives with which we're all indoctrinated by our culture in an attempt to extricate ourselves from its divisive grip, will hold prejudices. The only question is whether you allow your own to be unexamined prejudices."I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this," Richards said, his tone becoming angry and frustrated as he defended himself.How is this not racist:"Shut up! Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f------ fork up your a--...Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!"Those comments obviously indicate that Richards either must have been possessed by a racist demon or he was just "playing one" onstage that night, right?
The real problem is that Richards was more concerned about being labeled racist because contemporary society has deemed that label the sign of a fringe element, a social pariah.
Had he been more self-reflective he might have something more sane, such as "I realize that I am a product of a culture steeped in a toxic history regarding race, and my outburst -- and the response to it -- is a teachable moment. It's important to think about how we feel about race and how our internal views about race play out in our daily lives. I intend to do so, because there was no excuse for what I said on stage."
Responding to getting publicly busted making a mockery of the Jena 6 by insisting "I'm not a racist!" is a near-certain step to burying and making intractable the very prejudices that allows someone to engage in such behavior in the first place. There more shame in denying being a racist when you patently, undeniably are than saying: "Yes, I'm a racist, but I don't want to be."
The Startle Reflex
by ginmar—liberal pinko commie hippie feminist female combat veteran who loves zombies and werewolves and hates trolls, twits, and MRAs.
I got back from Iraq in February of 05. I'd been in combat, gotten used to sleeping through the sound of small arms fire and mortars, and had done so many convoys that the thought never crossed my brain that just driving those highways---sometimes in canvas-sided humvees----was one of the most dangerous things you could do. I marveled at a gunfire- and mortar-free future. I was amazed at the notion of roads that were free of IEDs. I had all sorts of electric outlets at my disposal! Instead of sharing a hangar with hundreds of other women and men, I had my own room! Hell, I had a house! I was Paris Hilton, for pete's sake. It was too much to take in.
The profound startle reflex I'd had since our cool-off period in Kuwait was just something that would fade, I thought. After all, I'd had an easy time of it. One battle, a whole lot of convoys, getting bombed every day, getting injured in one humvee incident, hearing lots of gunfire, seeing a couple up close explosions, that time those Poles died practically in front of us because they were on time leaving and we weren't, the Iraqi friends who'd died, the slow and accumulating knowledge that our presence in Iraq was getting Iraqis killed---this was nothing. It wasn't WWII, after all. I had nothing to worry about. I was sure of it.
In Iraq, after all, you could be faced on one day with the photos of people Muqtada al-Sadr had tortured to death while hearing that a mass grave had been found near where you were stationed. And then the US media would inflate the size of the mass grave, leaving you to wonder...."How come four thousand dead Iraqis aren't enough?" Wasn't that who we were fighting for? How come they weren't real enough back home? In Iraq, they were what made the job do-able. If you didn't speak Arabic, you could at least speak Wave like a moron. I remember, to this day, every one of those faces. I wondered how many of them were now dead. I wondered if my blind acceptance of the war had anything to do with that. But I compared myself to veterans of previous wars, found my experience negligible compared to theirs, and decided that because I'd had such an easy time of it, I myself would be fine in comparison. I was certain of it.
For a while I was giddily happy. I was also the cockiest thing you ever saw. The VA would term this "Bravado" and I never did receive an answer to my question: did they call male veterans this? Even without an M-16 at my side, surviving death just about every day seemed to do something to my confidence level. I was a combat veteran and a liberal. I was the dreaded answer to every wingnut who proclaimed that women didn't belong in combat because men would try and protect them. (In my case, that protection amounted to asking me to carry the extra ammo---about ten extra pounds.) More than that, I was someone that didn't appear often in the public consciousness: a liberal pinko commie hippie feminazi combat veteran with a mouth and a blog and a tendency to interrupt conversations just because. For a few months after I got home, life (for me) was heaven. I frankly enjoyed being part of a small and select group that fucked up demographics and confounded characterization. Bite me, Rush. I'm your worst nightmare.
I got a job working in a bank and found a newfound ability to go toe-to-toe with obnoxious customers (usually male) while shutting them down verbally. The manager liked me so much she wanted me to work seven days a week, but I needed time off. She granted me unheard-of privileges, such as the option of sitting at her desk and reading when things got slow. While doing this one day, a walking advertisement for Nonwhite-Supremacy came in. He was over six feet tall (I'm five three), wearing a Harley Davidson tee shirt, and didn't appear to have washed in the recent past. He observed me reading and said loudly, "Lookit that there security guard reading. That's disgusting!"
It was so passive aggressive I was amused. Of course, I'd gotten aggressive. I stepped up to him, put the toe of my jump boot (left over from my time at Ft. Bragg) and looked up into his eyes. "Do I know you, sir?"
"No, I just don't think you should be readin'. You might miss somethin'."
"Sir, I just spent thirteen months in Iraq. I've been in combat. I guarantee you there is nothing I will ever miss ever again."
"Well, I'm entitled to my opinion."
"You certainly are, sir. But if you do not have all the available facts when you form that opinion it's worth about as much as you are."
I looked forward to a humble if happy life that resembled my old happy life: riding the bus to work because I could only drive humvees; spending my newly-freed-from-debt paycheck; going to bookstores; cruising the internet; writing books; writing books about zombies that had female protagonists; and finally, talking nice long walks for exercise as I intended to eat lots of steak and mashed potatoes.
One night I got on the bus and my vision had abruptly changed. It was blurry and too sharp, and my ears were ringing. I could barely breathe and my chest felt like it had a belt around it. My chest hurt. My stomach felt so bad I was afraid I'd throw up or worse. I finally got off the bus at a stop sign near a fast food restaurant and threw up in their restroom. I caught the next bus and hung on with white knuckles till I got to my stop in downtown, near a gas station. I threw up there, too. I had just had my first panic attack, and I wouldn't know that was what it was for a month.
The next morning, in the sunshine, I was much better. At night, though, with the skies getting darker and darker by the day, the symptoms got so bad that I finally gave up taking the bus and took a cab home one night. "Just once, I told myself." In the morning, I found a much shorter bus route. It took me seven minutes to get to the transfer point, and for a couple of weeks I managed to survive that seven minutes and the ten minutes that followed. Then I couldn't stand the longer bus ride that I transferred to. I started taking one bus and one cab in the morning. Then I just gave up and started taking cabs. I clutched at the door handles as if I was drowning, but that was it. Finally, I went to the VA. They said I was having panic attacks and they put me on Celexa, a drug which can cause anxiety. After a week or two on it, I found myself with a racing heart and a ringing in my ears. My eyes were blacking out and I headed for the bathroom and one of the stalls. I woke up in it some time later, having passed out. I was so dizzy and it was so hard to believe I could only come to one conclusion: I'd had a heart attack. I called 911. The paramedics couldn't find anything physically wrong with me.
The job at the bank turned out to be temporary, and my boss stopped answering my phone calls. Left alone with the panic attacks---it was weeks before the VA took me off Celexa----I stayed home, finding my perimeters shrinking by the day as the panic attacks now occurred even while I was walking. Eventually I stopped leaving the house at all. An NCO started giving me rides to the VA for therapy, which consisted of half-hour sessions while the psychiatric nurse asked brief questions. Somehow the fact that I was having nightmares and drinking to make myself sleep never seemed to be serious problems. The NCO also took me to the Disabled American Veterans, who filed a request for benefits for me. The NCO, another Iraq vet, learned to pull over to the side of the road when I started having a panic attack so I could get out. One time we tried to go somewhere at night. That was the last time we tried this. By then it was a year after I'd come back, and I was still fighting my panic attacks with Celexa.
The VA decided I was 20% disabled, even though without the ability to ride the bus or do anything without having a panic attack I was effectively shut in my house. I appealed, and this time I attached something I'd held back, partially because I hadn't watched the whole thing myself: a video of the battle I was in, 38 minutes out of a 22-hour ordeal, shot by one of the civilians we had been guarding. During one section of the battle he'd had his camera pointed right at me, right as a mortar landed maybe ten or twenty meters in front of my position. That was the last thing I remember for twenty minutes. Judging by the video what happened next was that we got over-run, bombed, and subjected to a truly stunning barrage. You could even see my red tracers in the darkness. I just couldn't remember it. After that video, the VA said I was 50% disabled, and with that I got a therapist and an anti-anxiety drug, plus a change in anti-depressant. I thought therapy would help me. It turns out that only works for good therapy.
One of the most frightening symptoms of panic attacks is how you feel you might lose total control of your body. You're terrified beyond anything you've ever felt before, especially what you feel during war, when you just sort of bury it for some later time. You feel like you might throw up, pee your pants, or worse. When I told the therapist about this, she said, "Get Depends."
With the therapist came a new anti-depressant: Prozac. I'd heard of that name, so I had high hopes, and with the two new drugs I found I could make brief forays out of the house for the first time in months. I was still having nightmares but it wasn't till later that I got to read the screening notes the VA did on me, which noted my inability to remember most of my nightmares: this, the doctor felt, meant that I really wasn't having them. They were also skeptical about my claim of suffering anxiety; while observed in the waiting room, noted one doctor, I had not "looked anxious". In fact, I had such a profound startle reflex that I woke up at the slightest noise during the night, and then found it hard to get back to sleep because then I would be certain I heard things in the darkness. The Fourth of July was hell for me. In my neighborhood it started in late June and lasted till the end of July. The anti-anxiety drugs only took the edge off. I would try to go for a walk and find myself gritting my teeth at every step, looking for snipers on every roof, before finally giving up and running home. Even in the house, I was at the mercy of any loud noise or sudden movement. The therapist just sighed and ignored it. She explained how in order to combat my panic attacks---the worst of which occurred in vehicles---I would have to forgo the anti-anxiety medication and just get on a bus and ride out a panic attack till my anxiety 'decreased.' Exactly how I was supposed to reach that point was left to the imagination and to some deep breathing exercises.
By now it was August of 06, and I could feel myself sinking. I had no words for the way I felt. My mother had died a month before I left for Iraq, and it was a year since I had started showing symptoms. My reserve unit's response to my illness had been to demand that I stop whining. "I went to Iraq," said one desk-sitter. "I don't have PTSD. How could she?" They didn't take the trouble to hide this from me, either. A military doctor wrote a profile restricting me from carrying or firing a weapon or riding in a vehicle in a convoy, but my commander tried to guilt me into doing exactly that, with the doctor's note on her desk. The doctor outranked her, but I didn't have her phone number, and I was a lot more vulnerable than I'd been a year earlier. When she finally had me in tears, she gave up, but the damage was done. Being attacked constantly got rid of the confidence Iraq had given me. Along with the nightmares that grew steadily worse--in frequency and content---came memories that I hadn't originally had, as the initial trauma receded. With the nightmares---which always featured innocent people dying while I was frozen, unable to help---came a steadily-increasing guilt, made more vivid by every minor memory that came back, every moment I'd spent chatting with some ordinary Iraq on the street.
"Missus, hey, Missus? You have children?"
"No, I have cats. Meow, meow?"
Iraqis crack up. Are they dead now?
In late October I began to crash. The depression got so bad I couldn't leave the house, go to the VA, bathe, or do much beyond lie on the floor and cry. The faces came to me in my dreams, and then I stopped sleeping. The therapist offered platitudes and little else: "Well," she said perkily. "We need to get you in here!" I was in tears, crying myself to sleep at odd hours, unable to sleep in the dark, and having uncontrollable nightmares and she acted like it was a matter of me not getting a cab. The faces of the Iraqis I had known---especially of the ones who had died---rose before my eyes when I did sleep. If George Bush's mission was accomplished, I had helped, and innocent people had died. There had to be some way to pay for it. Sometime in late October the solution came to me: I had to punish myself for what I had done. I got a knife and started cutting myself, repeatedly. I told the VA I wanted to die. They asked me if I had a plan to kill myself and I said, not yet. Then they twiddled their thumbs, dithered, and finally found me a place in an outpatient therapy program.
I was the only woman in the program. They didn't take me off the Prozac, just added Ziprasadone after a week or so to help me sleep and even my moods out. I slept in a building on the VA campus at night, and during the day I received 'therapy' that was taken from books like "Better Self Esteem in Ten Days." The sole attention my panic attacks got one day was when they informed me I had to go do some community service. I had a panic attack in the vehicle on the way there. They never tried it again.
We had art therapy, crafts therapy, and group therapy. In group therapy, with the exception of a couple of Korean and Viet Nam vets, I was the sole woman---and none of them knew I'd fought off a sexual assault in Iraq. The guys my own age were a mix of shoplifters and wife-beaters, the latter including one cop. One guy, a colonel, whined that he didn't see anything wrong with admiring 'a nice tushy walking down the hallway.' The Therapist---a guy this time----didn't say anything. It fell to me to call them on their sexism, and for my pains I got called a man hater, in a group where I was outnumbered. It was interesting, though---all the older combat vets sided with me and egged me on. "Go get 'em, gin, get 'em!" They told me, before and after therapy. One shoplifter stole stuff because he wanted new and better toys than anyone had, and he was even then designing his ideal, 5000-square foot house. When we got another female in the group, she turned out to be a male appeaser and joined them in calling me a man hater. I had been recommended to the program through the VA's women's center. Evidently it never occurred to anyone that putting a woman amongst a group of sexists was not the best way to mental health.
The program ended and I went back to the same loud neighborhood that exacerbated my symptoms, my coping mechanisms limited to art therapy and best sellers. The DAV filed an appeal on my case, indicating that a suicidal incident ought to be enough to reconsider my case. My therapist opined that I should consider which one made me feel better, the therapy or the fight against the VA---for benefits. When I told her about the sexist men and their behavior, she shrugged, "There's all different kinds of jerks in the world." I fired her on the spot. She didn't even seem to realize it.
The suicidal feelings didn't leave; they just took some time to build up again. The VA found in my case that because I sleeping 'up to ten hours a night' (well, somebody was, even if it wasn't me), that because I was going to take part in intensive therapy that summer, and that because I would undoubtedly get better as a result of this future therapy, they were denying my overall claim while granting me an increase of ten percent. They said I had moderate symptoms with mild impediments to work or school. After a few weeks of reading the decision and realizing how powerless I really was, my brain also came to the conclusion that if I were gone, I would be doing a lot of people a big favor. Six weeks ago, I drank a lot of booze, took a lot of pills, and waited for it to all go away. Instead, I got very sick, and received a trip to a local (non-VA) hospital. There I was astonished to find that doctors did not treat patients as if they were lying sluts who'd asked to get raped. I found myself in tears because after two years it was the first time medical professionals had treated me with consideration and kindness. I don't have enough space for all the things they didn't do, the things to which I'd gotten accustomed from the VA. Instead, they jumped to get me options, asked me questions, and listened to my answers. They didn't argue with me. They were sympathetic. They were nice to me. They actually seemed to think they shouldn't injure me further. Worse yet, it never dawned on me that this was not unusual in medical professionals. I thought I'd found Heaven.
Most importantly, they put me on some new meds. I'm not as suicidal as I once was, but it's there, as are the nightmares. The VA finally listened to my complaints about insomnia (sleeps ten hours a night) and gave me sleeping pills, which had such disastrous side effects that I stopped taking them. I have a lawyer now who believes in pushing the VA rather than letting them amble along. I've found a civilian therapist I like, even if I can't afford to go to him. I call the suicide-prevention hotline now and then but at least I know it's there. I haven't cut myself in.....about ten days. I've clawed my way around the block and to the post office, even if I did have a full-fledged panic attack because of the line.
I'm going to the VA tomorrow, and once again I am going to tell them to get their act together. One of these days, someone will listen. I won't stop asking till they do.
"The harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the CIA"
When the Justice Department "publicly declared torture 'abhorrent' in a legal opinion in December 2004," they weren't, it turns out, being serious. They were being ironic—because, as the New York Times reports today, soon after Gonzo's arrival as Attorney General in Feb. 2005, "the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency."
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.It might have been nice if Comey had made some public objections, but okay, never mind that. When do we start impeachment proceedings?
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it.
Yeah, yeah—I know. But we should. Dammit, at this point, the only way to show this nation does not condone the despicable actions of this administration is to start impeachment proceedings. Even if they fail. We should. It's the right goddamned thing to do.
Over at his place, Mustang Bobby also notes: "And if all that James Comey could come up with was that they would be 'ashamed' when the news came out, even he—the knight in shining armor whose midnight ride to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft saved us from even more warrantless wiretapping—has some pretty low standards when it comes to the public reaction. If that's all he can muster, we truly have become a nation that seems to be immune to the kinds of things that used to horrify us; that used to separate us from the nations we held up as the enemies of freedom and democracy." Amen, brother.
Also see: Hilzoy, Digby, Steve Benen, Drum, Oliver Willis, Jeralyn, and Athenae.
John McCain: Some of My Best Friends Are Mormons
Sen. John McCain seems to have forgotten one of the oldest adages in politics: if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.At a meeting with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal editorial board, McCain was asked whether Mormons are Christians — a serious issue with many evangelicals, and a potential pitfall for Mitt Romney.
Okay, he's converting from Episcopalian to Baptist...but holding off the full-immersion baptism during the campaign because it might seem like he's doing it for political reasons. (Perish the thought.) He's asserted that the Constitution made the United States a Christian nation, and now he's not sure that the Mormons are Christians. Those last two points just happen to be the pillars of the Religious Reich's manifesto.
"I don't know. I respect their faith. I've never frankly looked at the Mormon religion. I've known a lot of Mormons who are wonderful people," McCain said. "More importantly, I don't think it should be held against Gov. Romney. The fact that he's a Mormon should not be a factor in people's judgment."
Well, if he insists on digging, it makes you wonder how much more sucking up to the fundies can Senator McCain do before the Iowa caucuses. What's next; burn a Quaker at the stake and beat up a queer?
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Question Of The Day
Have you ever had a true precog moment and made a prediction about something that actually came true?
I remember years ago when I read Jurassic Park, I was totally accurate in my casting of Jeff Goldblum to play Ian Malcolm before the movie production even started.
ZOMG!
Not only has Britney Spears lost custody of her children, she's also getting FAT!!! Christ on a crutch, where does the horror end?! Paging Chris Crocker…
Welcome to the American Media, where losing children in a bitter custody dispute to a douchy ex-husband because you're wracked with addiction is on par with weighing all of 160 pounds.
And lest you think that Star magazine actually gives a flying shit about the very real dangers of her "diet," note that the (probably Photoshopped) picture of her looking more slender is labeled "The WOW she was!"
[Before you say anything shitty about Britney Spears, please consult Mr. Fry. Image via Jezebel.]
Adios, Pete Domenici
New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow.Domenici has struggled with health problems over the last several years and has been dogged by questions about the role he may have played in the firing of U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in Albuquerque. As a result, he had been long been rumored as a potential retirement. He joins Republican Sens. John Warner (Va.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Wayne Allard (Colo.) on the sidelines for 2008.
It's been six years since I've lived in New Mexico, but I've been following the politics there. My guess is that Heather Wilson won't take the plunge; she barely won re-election last year; a sign that she's worn out her welcome, not to mention her part in the Iglesias firing. Marty Chavez has been the mayor of Albuquerque (off and on) since before I moved there in 1995, and the last time he ran for state-wide office was for governor and lost to the incumbent, moderate Republican Gary Johnson. He's done a lot of good for the city, but I'm not sure he's that well known outside of Bernalillo County, and New Mexico is a huge state.
The most likely candidates on the Republican side are Reps. Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce. Several Democrats are mentioned including Rep. Tom Udall, Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and former state Attorney General Patricia Madrid. The dream candidate for Democrats is Gov. Bill Richardson but his advisers insist he is not interested and focused on the 2008 presidential race. Wealthy businessman Don Wiviott is already in the race and has put several hundred thousand dollars of hiw [sic] own money into the bid.
As much as I respect Bill Richardson, his chances of winning the presidency are nada; he's more VP material or would make a dandy Secretary of State. It would be no shame for him, after taking his expected losses in the primaries, to make the run for the Senate. My guess is that he'd win by a nice margin, the same way he's won all of his elections for Congress and governor.
As for the Republicans and their dwindling hopes for keeping the Senate in 2008 with a number of vulnerable seats and the already-announced retirements, Senator Pete, as he's known around the state, has just dropped a jalapeño in their martinis.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
The New Misogyny: "I'll Be Over Here Behind the Big Butts and Black Girls"
The new misogyny, to the surprise of no one paying the slightest attention, is the same as the old misogyny in that it conveys the same tired old ideas about women, and women's bodies, and what those bodies should look like, and to whom they belong. But the new misogyny, hip to the counter-narratives devised by clever feminists who have exposed misogyny in media, sometimes has to sneak those messages into the marketplace of ideas. The new misogyny has taken a long look at the millions of women in whom the old misogyny has created a profound and lasting thirst for images of themselves in media, and it has delivered a tantalizing opiate for these masses—glimpses of fat women and/or women of color, behind whom the new misogyny hides its familiar refrains.
While we ooh and ahh at the magnanimity of the producers of women's products actually deigning to show maybe 3% (instead of the usual >1%) of the physical spectrum of womanhood—and no less under the auspices of a pro-woman campaign—the new misogyny creeps by undetected, hiding itself behind the unexpectedly included women. There, behind the big butts and the black girls, the new misogyny can safely reinforce the same shitty narratives about women, using the same divisive and exclusionary tactics that have pitted women against one another for years.
That is, when it's not putting directly into the mouths of those women negative messages about their bodies and experiences, delivered with a girlish smile or a self-deprecating laugh—messages that are certain to be drowned out by the grateful and celebratory applause of routinely ignored women and well-meaning allies who are quite understandably thrilled at the mere sight of women who look downright like them (or their wives, or mothers, or sisters, or friends).
Today, Blue Gal forwarded me this Playtex bra advert, which features "real" women talking sassily about what cutesy names they've given their breasts.
"What do I call them?"
"Boobs, breasts, knockers…"
"Are you asking me if I have a nickname for them?"
"It's a guy thing to name parts of your body!"
"Betty and Jane."
"Titties! Boobies!"
"I call them Lacey and Casey."
"Breasts! Ta-tas!"
"It kinda rhymes, and they're kinda, ya know, my friends."
"Knockers!"
"Puppies."
"Teasers."
"Two baby boobs."
"It's me."
"They're my girls."
"Yes!"
"I've been asked to shake the moneymakers on the subway a few times."
"Rowrr."
"The little girls that could."
"Hello."
"Babies!"
"They're my best friends."
Wait just a minute. Back up for a second.
I've been asked to shake the moneymakers on the subway a few times?! Giggle giggle ha ha.
And that's exactly how smoothly and coolly the new misogyny can minimize the seriousness of sexual harassment.
The entire raison d'être for HollaBack NYC, HollaBack Chicago, HollaBack Boston, HollaBack San Francisco, HollaBack Seattle, HollaBack D.C., HollaBack Texas, HollaBack Pennsylvania, HollaBack Colorado, HollaBack Canada, and probably some I'm missing has been reduced in a bra ad being praised for its pro-woman messaging to a one-liner that treats the sexual objectification of a woman's breasts by a stranger as a compliment.
Fates help us all.
And speaking of sexual objectification, let us stop for a moment to consider the irony that this advert—and others in the series, like the grim "Happy Bra Dance" spot—are evoking positive reactions in women who are thrilled to finally see fat women and/or women of color sexually objectified. Yay! Go women's lib! Go civil rights! Go fat acceptance! Now we (not-all-that-) fat/brown chicks can dance in our bras on national television while sexist straight doodz debate who's the most fuckable, too!
If we're lucky, maybe once Joe Francis gets out of jail, he'll even do a Girls Gone Wild: Fatties on the Loose edition.
Then we'll know we've made it.
Now don't get me wrong—images of larger women and women of color leaving the cold darkness of Obscurity for the long march toward the warmer climes of Ubiquity is, naturally, A Good Thing. But if those images are ever presented within the perpetuity of misogynist messaging, and certainly if they're used as a Trojan horse for that messaging, it's impossible to regard them, to borrow Maura's term, as an unalloyed good.
Of course I want to see more images of fat women and women of color (and disabled women and dwarf women and birthmarked women and tattooed women and women of every shape, size, color, age, and circumstance). But I'll be damned if I want their presence used as a diversionary tactic while my skull is pounded with messages like "Breasts are toys!" and "Sexual harassment is flattering!" by companies who then expect me to genuflect in desperate gratitude because this something is ostensibly better than the nothing of the status quo.
Fuck. That.
It takes more to earn my applause.
