by Shaker Jay in Oregon
Hans Reiser, a programmer known best for the Linux filesystem that bears his name, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser. Last seen on September 3, 2006 after dropping their kids off as Hans Reiser's house, she was supposed to meet her best friend that evening, but never arrived. Her minivan was found six days later; her purse was still in the van and bags of groceries were rotting inside. Friends started a website (ninareiser.com; site is currently offline) and billboards were posted in Oakland to spread the word and enlist the public's help in finding Nina.
Eventually, police narrowed their investigation to Nina's husband, Hans Reiser. On October 10, 2006, Hans was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The prosecution based their case on strong circumstantial evidence. Some of Nina's blood was found in Hans' house; Hans removed and disposed of the passenger seat of his car, and washed out the inside with so much water that almost an inch of standing water was still in the car when police examined the car. Hans Reiser bought books on police investigative techniques after Nina's disappearance, engaged in "counter-surveillence techniques" in avoiding the police on September 18 , 2006, and when he was arrested he was carrying almost $9,000 and his passport. Hans Reiser spent $5,000 on retaining a lawyer even before Nina's disappearance was blamed on foul play. Both Hans' and Nina's cellphones were found with the batteries removed.
The defense waffled between asserting that Nina wasn't dead—she was kidnapped, faking her death, or fled back to Russia—and asserting that if Nina was dead, Hans wasn't the one that killed her. The defense tried to pin Reiser's unusual behavior on what is coming to be known as the "geek defense"; Reiser is simply a misunderstood programmer with poor social skills and an overly analytical mind. Hans was disruptive in the courtroom; his lawyer had to ask witnesses to restate their answers because Hans kept asking him questions, and at one point the judge threatened to bar Hans Reiser from his own trial. Hans took the stand against his lawyer's advice and offered one highly-implausible reason after another for his behavior. (For an "obessively logical" computer geek, Hans Reiser appears not to be familiar with Occam's Razor.)
On April 28, 2008, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder; in an interview, one juror stated that the strong circumstantial evidence as well as Hans' behavior after and lack of sympathy for Nina's disappearance led to his conviction.
The truly appalling part of the story is the attitude of Reisers' many admirers, which reads like a laundry list of excuses for male privilege.
In the minds of his supporters, Hans' unusual behavior could be explained away as ADHD, Asperger's, or being "too geeky". In the face of every opinion to the contrary, Nina was a scheming shrew who only married Hans to gain a USA visa, ruined his business by embezzling money (unproven) and sleeping with his business partner, and was an unfit mother. Nina's restraining order against her husband proves that it's "too easy to get a TRO". Police officers who testified that Hans was a danger to Nina were conveniently ignored. Sean Sturgeon—Hans' former business partner with whom Nina had an affair—confessed to the murders of eight other people during the trial; despite the fact that Sean Sturgeon was not convicted of murdering anyone (police have been unable to link Sturgeon to any murders), maintains that he did not kill Nina, and was never called to testify in Hans' trial, Hans' supporters trumpet the judge's decision to bar Sturgeon's confessions from being mentioned to the jury as proof that Hans is being railroaded.
I don't know Hans Reiser other than through his work on Linux filesystems and did not bear any animosity to him prior to this, even though he frequently clashed with other programmers and computer enthusiasts over ReiserFS and Linux and gained a reputation for being egocentric and difficult to work with; the final fate of the code that bears his name has yet to be determined.
In my opinion, the jury came back with the correct verdict; the saddest part is that Hans' and Nina's children will likely never know what happened to their mother; Hans Reiser maintains his innocence and will likely appeal the verdict, and to date Nina's body has not been found.
(The San Francisco Chronicle had a reporter liveblogging the trial; Wired also ran a series of articles.)
Hans Reiser Convicted of First-Degree Murder in the Disappearance of His Wife
The Nadir of Hardballz
Chuck "Murray" Todd says what's on the mind of every flag-waving, lapel pin-wearing, Bible-carrying, patriotic American: "[Obama] had to look like he could stand up to his pastor. I mean, let's remember, we're electing a commander-in-chief. If you can't stand up to your pastor on views you don't agree with, are you going to stand up to another world leader?"
Just kill me now.
[Thanks to Pet, as always, for the video.]
Actual Headline
Bush says no magic wand to lower fuel prices: "U.S. President George W. Bush said on Tuesday there was no 'magic wand' to bring down record-high fuel prices… 'I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course,' he said during a news conference."
No magic wand? No shit, Sherlock. Howsabout a time machine so you can go back to 2003 and not start a war that tripled the price of oil?
Timing is Everything
The stimulus checks are arriving just in time to pay for gas that has gone up over 50 cents a gallon since the bill giving the money away was passed.
Since this stimulus is a one-time deal, I'm reminded of the old saying, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." (Actually, if you teach him to fish, you end up with a bunch of guys out in the Gulf Stream drinking beer, but that's another story.) This won't do anything for the economy other than create a one-time blip, and chances are most of the people will use it to pay down their credit cards, which means that the money will go right back where it came from: the banks that are shoring up the massive debt of the government. All they're doing is tossing people a fish when what they should be doing is fixing the system so that a teacher making $45,000 doesn't pay more in taxes per dollar earned than Bill Gates.
It also strikes me as ironic that the Republicans, who always criticize the Democrats for throwing money at a problem, are the ones who came up with this scheme to hand out "free money" to everyone. Do I suspect that there's some political motivation behind this blatant attempt to cover up their complete clusterfucking of the economy for the last seven years? Why no, not at all. Oh, look at the kitty!
(Cross-posted.)
Still President
Still grinning. Still dying.
266 days.
The end is nigh—but not nigh enough, dammit.
[U.S. President George W. Bush speaks during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington April 29, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Reed]
Quote of the Day
"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I might not know him as well as I thought, either."—Barack Obama, throwing Reverend Jeremiah Wright under the bus, for reasons Bob Herbert explains here.
This several-day exchange has been painful to watch. I don't really have anything to say about it other than that, except that I feel quite bad for Obama at the moment. It doesn't matter that I have no particularly affinity for Wright; Obama obviously did—and I can empathize with the gut-twisting feeling of being disappointed and betrayed by someone you once admired.
Hillary Sexism Watch: Part Eighty-Goddamn-Seven
I am beginning to feel like a broken record.
Worse yet, I feel like I can't get through a single fooking hour, no less a whole day, without having to document some egregious example of sexism against a woman who has the unmitigated temerity to think she can run for president. If it's not some tosser comparing Clinton to a pregnant bride-to-be, then it's some other tosser comparing her to Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction.
On the April 27 edition of CNN's Sunday Morning, National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin, during a discussion about the Democratic presidential primary race, stated: "[L]et's be honest here, [Sen.] Hillary Clinton is Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She's going to keep coming back, and they're not going to stop her." In response, co-host T.J. Holmes said: "What, Ken?" Rudin replied: "Well, we'll figure that out, there's a lot of ways to imagine that." Rudin returned to the analogy later, stating of Clinton, "[T]here may be a lot of pressure on her from the party bigwigs, whoever they are, to say, look, it's time to go, but she'll say, look, I'm in it until the end. I expect her to be in until the end, as Glenn Close was."For those unfamiliar with the film, Media Matters helpfully explains: "In the 1987 film, Close plays a woman who begins stalking her co-worker, played by Michael Douglas, and his family following a one-night stand with him. In the film's climax, Douglas' character seemingly drowns Close's character in the tub, until she suddenly springs from the water wielding a knife. She is finally shot dead by the wife of Douglas' character."
Goddess Echidne, who gets the hat tip, points out that there are two ways to interpret Rudin's message:
The kinder one (yes, this is the kinder one) is that Hillary Clinton can't be stopped by anything less than being killed by Michelle Obama, that she is an almost unkillable monster.Yes, the less kind interpretation is that uppity women should be killed, and, as we've seen, there are men in the media (Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty) who are patently willing to go there. Just jokingly, of course, hardy har. Thing is, these days you can't get most people to go along with the idea that uppity women deserve actual murder, or even the voluminous public humiliation preferred by polite society (death of a promising career), just for having the audacity to seek equality—so the less kind interpretation is also predicated on casting uppity women as deserving of their deathly punishment by virtue of their being vindictive, simultaneously hysterical and sociopathically cold, robotically calculating, crazy, and generally unlikable.
The less kind interpretation has to do with what that particular movie was all about. It was a parable about bad women: working women, uppity, independent, demanding; and about good women: mothers who stay at home and support their husbands through thin and thick. It was a movie about the loathing, fear and hatred of women who don't follow the "good woman" code of behavior, and what happens to those women at the end.
It could always be the case that Rudin is unaware of that interpretation. And pigs also fly almost every day.
Where have I seen that list before? Oh yeah: Vindictive, simultaneously hysterical and sociopathically cold, robotically calculating, crazy, and generally unlikable.
Huh.
Because I need to say this every time I post about Clinton, yes, I think there are reasons to not support Hillary as a candidate. (If I didn't, I wouldn't have worked for John Edwards, now, would I?) But the media's coverage of Clinton is so relentlessly entwined with misogynist frames that I quite genuinely believe that it takes some conscious effort to diligently sort through all that stuff and carefully extricate legitimate objections to Clinton's candidacy from prepackaged hatred delivered via vaguely reasonable-sounding media memes.
Before this campaign season started in earnest, I held a lot of reflexive opinions about Hillary Clinton's candidacy that were really just half-baked misogynist horseshit. I still have policy disagreements with her, but my list of objections, reduced to what's fair, is a hell of a lot shorter than it was before I spent some time giving it a long and critical look.
I sincerely doubt I'm the only one whose perspective was in need of an adjustment, who was decidedly foolish to not consider that a media which regularly trades in sexist swill wouldn't magically set that aside for any woman, even a presidential candidate.
Then again, maybe I am. In which case, consider this series my penance.
[Hillary Sexism Watch: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Nine, Forty, Forty-One, Forty-Two, Forty-Three, Forty-Four, Forty-Five, Forty-Six, Forty-Seven, Forty-Eight, Forty-Nine, Fifty, Fifty-One, Fifty-Two, Fifty-Three, Fifty-Four, Fifty-Five, Fifty-Six, Fifty-Seven, Fifty-Eight, Fifty-Nine, Sixty, Sixty-One, Sixty-Two, Sixty-Three, Sixty-Four, Sixty-Five, Sixty-Six, Sixty-Seven, Sixty-Eight, Sixty-Nine, Seventy, Seventy-One, Seventy-Two, Seventy-Three, Seventy-Four, Seventy-Five, Seventy-Six, Seventy-Seven, Seventy-Eight, Seventy-Nine, Eighty, Eighty-One, Eighty-Two, Eighty-Three, Eighty-Four, Eighty-Five, Eighty Six.]
Shaker Gourmet: Garlic Foccacia
Our recipe this week comes courtesy of Shaker bekitty!
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me (and include a link to your blog, if you have one!) at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.comGarlic Foccacia
Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1/4 cup garlic olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp crushed garlic
1 cup warm water
2 tbsp powdered yeast
1 tbsp sugar
extra salt and oil for drizzling
Method:
Stir the sugar into the water and sprinkle the yeast on top. While the yeast is rising, put the flour in a large bowl and add the salt and garlic. Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in the oil. Rub oil into the mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.
When the yeast mixture is bubbly, pour it into the flour mix. Stir, adding more water if dough is too dry. Your dough should be a smooth ball. Cover and leave to rise for about an hour in a warm place.
When the dough has doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Shape and place into a floured 8" pan. Brush with garlic olive oil and sprinkle with salt - I usually use coarse manuka smoked rock salt, but that's quite hard to find outside New Zealand; hickory smoked salt has the same kind of smell if you can find it, or plain rock salt is fine.
Bake for 30 minutes at 425F (220C). Leave to cool for about ten minutes, covered with a dish towel.
Southbound: Recommendations, please!
OK, folks. This ol' Space Cowboy is going to be headin' down south to Houston for a couple of days on business.
My question for all of the southern Shakers (or anyone really familiar with Houston): Where's the best place to eat?
I already know about Mark's American Cuisine, but I'm still looking for other options just in case. None of the dinners involve clients or impressing people. My boss and I just want to have some really great food.
Suggest away!
Not the Way to Endorse a Female Candidate
Or any candidate. Use a homophobic/misogynistic slur:
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid Tuesday, saying the New York senator "gets it.""Pansy" is one of the many, many homophobic slurs that is infused with a heavy dose of misogyny—because it's generally used to mean not just any gay man, but specifically an effeminate gay man. Ya know, because being anything like a woman is the worst possible thing a man can be.
…Easley, a popular two term governor who is unable to run for re-election because of term limits, also praised Clinton for her persistence. "I've been accused of being persistent, and down right aggravating…but this lady right here makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy," Easley said.
So while casually insulting gay men, Easley also managed to insult women, all in the process of trying to praise Hillary Clinton's fortitude.
Oh, the irony.
Rape Doesn't Exist
Part Wev in an ongoing series…
In the Morning Readings, Pet briefly touched on the AP's refusal to use the word rape in their coverage of the FLDS polygamist compound in Texas, despite half of the teenage girls being pregnant.
Via email, Shaker Reba points out that the AP coverage also includes the ridiculous passage (emphasis mine):
The sect, which broke from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more than a century ago, believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is revered as a prophet. Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage with an older cousin.Um, no—he was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. Rape is the criminal act to which he was found guilty of being an accomplice and for which he was sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life. Not "forcing a girl into marriage."
The aversion to using the word "rape" is just farcical at this point, when even a man who has been convicted of being an accomplice to rape is protected from an association with the word.
Still Dying
Four U.S. Troops In Baghdad Are Killed by Rocket Fire: "Four U.S. soldiers were killed in two rocket attacks in Baghdad on Monday as clashes between U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen intensified, the military said."
And here I thought that the surge worked, because my president keeps assuring me that it did, but 44 troops have died in April, making it the deadliest month since last September.
My president wouldn't lie to me…would he?
Psst—Didja Hear Barry Got Hils Pregnant?!
It's true! I learned all about it from DeWayne Wickham in USA Today, who tells me: "If Democrats are going to win the White House in November, they need a shotgun wedding in June."
That's the actual opening line to one of the most vapid, idiotic pieces yet about the supposedly insurmountable rift between black voters and white women voters. Wickham's thesis is that the Dems "stand a good chance of suffering a humiliating defeat in the general election" if the party doesn't run Clinton and Obama together on one ticket. The merits of such an orchestrated maneuver are arguable; I'm more interested in the imagery Wickham uses to convey his idea—a knocked-up Clinton with baby daddy Obama, forced together at gunpoint by Clinton's papa the party elders?
Oy.
Only a person irrevocably insistent on looking at everything through the broad lenses of sex and race could come up with an analogy that carelessly invokes appalling sex and race stereotypes, and treat it as serious political discourse. It's no wonder the whole primary has played out in the unimaginative, uncritical, pithy-ass media like Demographixxx: Beyond Thunderdome!!!
With commentary this absurd, it's no wonder the commentariat persistently fails to realize that the Actual Voting Public is far less permanently polarized and immovably entrenched than they presume.
And, yeah, there are some people who will refuse to vote for one or the other, but, in the final analysis, most lefties will—like every other election—hold their noses and vote for whatever vaguely-to-largely objectionable candidate the perennially stupid Democratic primary process has yielded as its nominee.
I know that narrative's not as "fun" and "horseracy" and "Beyond Thunderdome" and "lacking in critical thought" as the media generally prefers, but it would be nice if they could suspend their desire to have fun long enough to realize that perpetuating the idea of imminent sex- and race- wars in the Democratic ranks actually means something—to the country, to the party, and to the people to whom divisiveness is being unfairly attributed.
It's all fun and games for the people who will never get hurt.
The rest of us would appreciate a little seriousness for a fucking change, though.
["M-Fer" credit Bill O'Reilly.]
Take My Arm, My Love
When ABC news did their second social experiment about Public Displays of Affection (PDAs) by having a gay male couple and a lesbian couple kiss and cuddle in public (the first experiment used straight couples), the reactions were varied.
There was the woman who called the cops:
Operator: "Birmingham Police operator 9283"There was the woman who said:
Caller: "We have a couple of men sitting out on the bench that have been kissing and drooling all over each other for the past hour or so. It's not against the law, right?"
Operator: "Not to the best of my knowledge it's not."
Caller: "So there's no complaint I could make or have?"
Operator: "I imagine you could complain if you like ma'am. We can always send an officer down there."
And they did . . . . The officer told our couple that the police dispatch received a call because the two of them were making out.
"Just don't do that in public," he told them before leaving the scene.
"I would actually want our kids to grow up in a place where they would see various types of people engaging in behaviors that [are] loving."And then there were the people who took a whole different "think of teh childrenz!" tack:
"I don't really find it inappropriate, especially during the day when schoolchildren aren't running around. They might get confused and want an answer for what's going on," bystander Mary-Kate told us. The majority of the people who spoke about children seemed to echo Mary-Kate's feelings."Which means, basically, these folks are fine with "Gay PDA" -- as long as they don't have to face the uncomfortable, icky business of explaining to their children that not everybody on earth is like mommy and daddy.
Which kind of sucks.
But please, read on.
My partner and I rarely engage in kissing in public (even around our friends), but that's a personal choice based on our desire to keep our sexual intimacy extremely . . well . . . intimate. When we kiss, we like to kiss for real, and that's for us. (And yes, it is hot, thank you very much. And no, you may not watch.)
However, I doubt that most straight, cisgendered people think about, or notice, how frequently they touch their partner in public in ways that are not necessarily "sexual" (in addition to kissing, cuddling, and the odd bum-squeeze) -- ie. holding hands, walking with an arm around the waist, smoothing the other's hair back out of their eyes -- nor do I think that most straight, cisgendered people are probably aware of the fact that when I touch my partner in public, it's nearly always a considered act.
I don't obsess about this -- as in -- it doesn't eat up my days and nights -- and I'm probably about as "out" as a queer can be in this country -- but every single time I take my partner's hand on the street, or toss my arm over her shoulder or around her waist, hug her goodbye or hello, I do a little, tiny "security sweep".
I notice who is around, and where I am, and what the energy feels like -- before I touch her in public. It's a tiny amount of attention, most often, but it's there.
I just noticed recently that in an unknown situation that seems "sort of" safe, (like walking in a crowded mall) I'm more likely to curl her arm through mine than to hold her hand -- which may seem counter-intuitive, since arm-in-arm actually affords much closer body contact -- but after I thought about this, I realized that walking "arm-in-arm" is something that I see straight girl-friends do more often than holding hands (after they're 12, anyway). In considering this choice, I also realized that in many situations, I'm happy to give any possible bigots in an uncertain setting the option of assuming that we're just a couple of straight girls.
Which sorta sucks.
I recognize this as the internalized homophobia that it is, but I can't deny that it's present in me. The fact is, that I stop, look, and listen before I demonstrate physical affection toward my beloved in nearly every public setting that is not clearly "queer safe".
I'm butch, and I seem butch (even to people who will tell you that their gaydar is hopelessly mis-calibrated). I seem butch no matter what I'm wearing, or what length my hair is. It's fairly difficult for me to "pass" -- even when I want to. My gait is stompy, and my demeanor, direct. I've always been that way -- from little on. My favorite colors in clothing are black and blue (Couture D'Bruise, as I like to call it) -- partially because my color sense sucks ass, but mostly because I have better things to do than figuring out what to wear.
My partner is androgynous-to-femme. She often wears dresses because she genuinely likes wearing them, and usually sports smashing combinations of floral tones or deep purples with highlights of teal.
And we adore each other.
If you caught us in an unguarded moment, this adoration would probably be very visible to you, whether we were snogging away like sex-crazed maniacs or sitting across the room from one another reading our respective books -- so moving out into the world also involves, for me, some adjustments beyond whether I touch her physically or not.
I notice that, in public, I seem to have an automatic timer that warns me not to gaze at her as long as I might at the privacy of our dining room table, a subtle mask that shifts the set of my smile when I respond to hearing her laugh, and an inner language editor that reflexively erases "honey", "my love" and "darling" from my lexicon as I'm calling to her across a parking lot.
I want to make it very clear that I don't think about these things.
These adjustments have become so internalized that I rarely, if ever, notice them -- until I sit down to write a post like this.
They are part of the enculturated self- censoring that most queers learn in order to assure their own safety in the world (and sometimes, their very survival). In fact, I had to "unlearn" many other, more rigid, tendencies to automatic hiding when I finally made the decision to be completely "out" as a lesbian.
I don't edit myself this way because I am ashamed of being a lesbian. I do it because I'm afraid that someone else, who thinks I ought to be ashamed of being a lesbian, might hurt me -- or worse, hurt my beloved.
Back in 1988, when I came out completely and publicly via a two-part article in the Oregonian, the nutcase Lon Mabon was mounting the first of many campaigns to curtail LGBTQ rights in the state of Oregon, in the guise of "Measure 8".
My oldest and best friend (a straight, married girl) poo-pooed the whole thing, saying "we've come farther than that, the Measure will never pass, tempest-in-a-teapot, blah, blah, blah" -- and stated that she couldn't understand why I was so upset about the whole thing.
This friend is the sister I never had. I loved her (and love her still) dearly, and her inability to see how the Measure 8 (which was passed that year) was likely to affect me and my family was incredibly painful to me. I remember weeping in her living room as I tried to explain something that was, to her, completely invisible. I talked to her about how scary it had been to come out publicly after having led a fairly comfortable life as a closeted queer, and she just didn't seem to get why it should be a big deal at all.
So, I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I'll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):
Spend an entire week pretending that you're not a couple. Don't write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being "friends". Refer to yourself only in the singular "I", never in the "we". When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a friend, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go intentionally into the closet as a couple. For a week.
They took my challenge.
They lasted exactly three days.
My friend returned to me in tears on day four and said: "I'm sorry. I had no idea what it is like for you."
[For those of you straight allies who are not coupled, but who want to play along, your challenge is (perhaps) simpler: Spend one week in which you make no mention and give no hint of your sexual orientation at all. When straight people around you are parsing the hotness of the opposite gender, go silent, or play along in a way that makes it seem as if you are part of the gang, but never reveals any real personal information. If someone asks you about your love-life, be evasive and non-committal. If you went on a date, and you're talking about it later, de-genderize all the pronouns, or consciously switch them (him to her, her to him, etc.).]
That is how I lived for the first 32 years of my life, whether I was single or coupled.
And while my current self-editing is not nearly as extreme as it was before I made the choice to live as an out lesbian, it's still self-editing.
I am still alert in public settings and default-cautious with strangers around revelation of my sexual orientation, no matter how much self-esteem I possess. Every time I meet someone new, I silently (and mostly, unconsciously) assess how I think they will handle the information that I am a lesbian.
That's one reason that I like my handle (PortlyDyke) -- because people's immediate response to it (friendly or foe-full) usually gives me some information in that initial assessment process, and saves me the trouble of "coming out" to them. I also let potential clients know, via my business website, that I am a lesbian -- right out front -- and figure that if they still hire me, well, they knew what they were getting.
It's one of the reasons that I've chosen to live in a small town that is known for its liberality and quirkiness -- where it is unlikely that I'm going to get hassled on the street for looking butchy, and where, if I was hassled, there would probably be some people around who would help me out (I hope) -- but also one of the reasons that I would not consider setting foot in the road-house near the paper mill unless I were accompanied by two or more straight friends.
In truth, these assessments and considerations are so much a part of my existence that I barely notice them, and the availability of the choice to either remain closeted or come out (a choice which is available for many, but not all queers) is one of the things that can make homo-/trans- phobia a very tricky sort of "-ism" to deal with.
[A thought which arises at this point: I imagine that these types of behavioral adjustments and choices are also made by people of color who can "pass" and mixed-race couples.]
The queer couples smooching for ABC had a camera crew and back up. The city officials and police departments had signed off on the experiment. I'd really love to hear an interview with those couples about whether the public affection they displayed is typical of how they would act on any street, at any time, or if they noticed subtle or overt changes in how they interacted because they had "permission" to be fully de-cloaked as queers.
In examining all this, I realized that, for me, choosing the closet, even in this incredibly subtle way -- by taking my beloved's arm instead of her hand on the street -- is simultaneously a direct participation in the heterosexist system that would deny me equality, and, often, a prudent move to preserve my safety.
Which definitely sucks.
Take my hand, my love.
[cross-posted]
Get It Together, Secret Service!
Noose Allegedly Found at Secret Service Training Center:
The U.S. Secret Service has placed a white agent on leave after an African American employee reported finding a noose hanging at the service's main training facility outside the nation's capital.Gee, couldn't this be kind of a huge fucking problem given that we may be only eight months away from our first black president?!
The service has acknowledged "an allegation of misconduct" at its J.J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., and that an employee last week was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. The employee is a veteran agent with the service, according to fellow agents.
The noose was found by an African American officer in the uniform division of the service during the week of April 14, according to those familiar with the alleged incident. That division protects the White House and surrounding grounds.
Cheesus. What the fuck is wrong with people?
(Rhetorical. There ain't enough bandwidth in the multiverse to completely answer that question.)
Question of the Day
We've done this one before, but it was almost two years ago now...
What's your favorite comfort food?
Mine is mashed potatoes. Skins in. Garlic. Onion. Black pepper. Sour cream. Fresh shredded parmesan.
Mmm...tatties.
Quote of the Day
"Lincoln-Douglas made it famous—a debate with no moderator—but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen between Obama and Clinton. … She says that she will debate him any place at any time, adding that it could even be done on the back of a flat-bed truck. He would probably prefer to run over her with a flat-bed truck at this point."—CNN's Jack Cafferty, coming in at #85 on the Hillary Sexism Watch with yet another allusion to Hillary's candidacy being swiftly ended with her murder.
Because, ya know, violence against women is completely hilarious and totally isn't a massive problem, which is why the Department of Justice has dedicated an entire office to it. Just to laugh and talk about how not a problem it is.
(If you're considering arguing this isn't an example of sexism, let me direct you here. If you're considering accusing me of thinking any criticism of Clinton is sexist, let me direct you here. If you're considering arguing that Cafferty's intent was not to be sexist, let me direct you here. And if you're considering accusing me of being in the bag for Hillary, let me direct you to a big bag of STFU.)
[H/Ts to Shakers Esmahan and Nona, by email.]
Congress must investigate crimes against women soldiers
The effort to prompt a renewed investigation of the suspicious death in Iraq of PFC LaVena Johnson has always had a strong ally in retired Army Colonel Ann Wright. Today, Col. Wright speaks out on LaVena’s case and that of other military women - in-theater and in the US - who have died following sexual assault. The introduction from the article at CommonDreams.org:
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begins — before they are even recruited.Col. Wright recaps the story of LaVena Johnson - already familiar to many Shakers - in some detail, but also speaks on the “suicides” and “non-combat related injuries” of such personnel as Army Private First Class Tina Priest, PFC Hannah Gunterman McKinney, Major Gloria D. Davis, and others. The prevalence of such deaths and assaults against the women who serve in the military demands earnest investigation by the armed forces - and by Congress, should the services fail in this trust. I highly recommend reading the essay by Col. Wright in its entirety.
But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the United States, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from “non-combat related injuries,” and then added “suicide.” Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide, strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of “non-combat related injuries,” with several identified as “suicides.”
94 US military women in the military have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in OIF. 13 US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.
Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by “natural causes,” and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.
8 women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of “non-combat related injuries” on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious “non-combat related injuries” on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as “suicides.”
