What's the frequency, Shakers?
Recommended Reading:
Kate and Renee on the fat-hating fuckneck who chained his daughter to a bed because he thought she was "too fat."
Kevin: Hang On, Everybody…
Evil Bender: Misogynist Film Trailer Really Has to Be Seen to Be Believed
Gwen: The Old and New Spock and Captain Kirk
Kathy: Welcome to the New First Family (Watch the video there when you've got some time.)
Chris: Driver Rams Car For "UnChristian-like" Driving
Recon: Found My Church
Leave your links in comments...
Friday Blogaround
The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media
In which Forbes unintentionally writes the best Onion piece I've read in ages.
[H/T Memeorandum.]
A Thing of Beauty
Sent to me by Shaker Pizza Diavola, who spotted it below a freeway underpass in San Francisco. Bill Stickers is innocent, but that guy sure ain't.
You Know…
…[trigger warning] you ladies wouldn't keep getting yourselves raped if you stopped walking home alone, taking public transportation alone, taking a man home with you, or going home with a man, and instead just called a cab by yourself like a good girl.
Oh.
A taxi driver drugged and sexually attacked 14 female passengers in less than two years, a court has heard.Here's the thing about rapists: They rape people. They rape people who are strong and people who are weak, people who are smart and people who are dumb, people who fight back and people who submit just to get it over with, people who are sluts and people who are prudes, people who rich and people who are poor, people who are tall and people who are short, people who are fat and people who are thin, people who are blind and people who are sighted, people who are deaf and people who can hear, people of every race and shape and size and ability and circumstance. The only thing that the victim of every rapist shares in common is the bad fucking luck of being in the presence of a rapist.
…Prosecutor Johannah Cutts QC said: "His primary intent had nothing to do with taking them home. His primary purpose was wholly sexual in nature.
"His intent was to ensure that they were completely at his mercy and then to sexually molest them."
Rapists are determined to rape. And if you didn't get into that rapist's cab, someone else would. And if no one got into that rapist's cab, he'd find another way to obtain his victims.
Victim-blaming is based on the damnably fucked-up notion that people (and women in particular) allow themselves to be victimized by virtue of carelessness or stupidity, and they need to be warned and educated and lectured and hectored and cajoled and shamed into never being victims (again).
No.
Our culture creates rapists—and they create victims. No one has ever been a victim of rape, until they had the bad fucking luck of being in the presence of a rapist.
Enough victim blaming. Enough.
[H/T to Sheffield Fems.]
In Pictures
The Boston Globe has a fantastic photo essay of the inauguration. It was hard to choose a handful for the post, as there are many great pictures. You should check it out!
Quote of the Day
"We also need to be affectionate—and you can see that with Barack and Michelle, as well. They do a lot of touching, kissing, even fisting with one another."—Some "sex expert" on Fox, who is obviously an idiot. She meant this, of course:
—which, when last seen being discussed on Fox, was suggested to be evidence that they were terrorists. Who knew the gestures of terrorism were also indicators of true romance? Maybe that's why Osama bin Laden has so many wives.
Save the Darby Free Library
(Now this is a library worth saving, as opposed to a certain library being built at SMU...)
One thing that always strikes me when we travel to Europe is the sense of being inescapably surrounded by history. From the biggest city to the smallest village, it's always there. And it has been there for hundreds, even thousands, of years.
It's certainly quite a contrast to the constant construction and development going on here. So much so, that when a story comes around about needing to save a truly historic landmark, I can't help but take note of it.
The Darby Free Library in Darby, PA is the oldest library in the country, in service since 1743. What a tragedy it would be if they would have to shut down due to lack of funds: Delaware County's Darby Free Library, which was founded in 1743 and is believed to be the oldest continuously operating public library in America, will be forced to close its doors at year's end if somebody doesn't write a fat check, the Daily News has learned.
If you've the means, please consider making an investment in our history. I, for one, would like to see it stay around for a while.
"We're on the chopping block," said Susan Borders, director of the library at 10th and Main streets, near the Southwest Philly border. "We thought we may have had four years left, but after going over our finances, we only have this year."
Founded by 29 Quaker townsmen, the library received its first shipment of 45 volumes from London in November 1743, with the assistance of botanist John Bartram. [...]
Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to the Darby Library Company, P.O. Box 164, Darby, PA 19023.
[H/T to Susie @ C&L]
Obama to Lift Global Gag Rule
OMGOMGOMG: "President Barack Obama on Friday will lift restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush, an administration official said. 'It will be today. He's going to make an executive order (lifting the global gag rule),' the official said."
We knew it was coming, but still: OMGOMGOMG.
At the Obama rally I attended on the Friday night just before the election, Obama was more explicit in his support of women's and LGBTQI equality than I had ever heard him. Part of me reacted to it by wishing he'd be so unapologetic even in areas he knew not to be so amenable to the message—and part of me reacted to it by suspecting it meant he would, if elected, go as far in the direction of real equality as the political culture will allow, that he would do whatever he can.
It was another moment in a very long string of moments over the course of two years in which I noted that Obama has an unrivaled capacity to irritate and thrill me in equal measure, frequently at the same time.
But right now, this week, his first week as our president, as he is, it appears, going as far as he can go, doing whatever he can, and maybe even then some, I am unreservedly thrilled.
And I might as well enjoy it, because it won't last forever.
But it's fucking great while it does.
Senate Passes Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Why, yes—I do enjoy a teaspoon with my US Senate legislation!
The US Senate passed a major wage discrimination bill, moving one step closer to presenting the legislation to President Barack Obama so that it may signed into law.The House passed the act on Jan. 9. Lilly Ledbetter has reportedly already been invited by President Obama to appear at the White House for the signing ceremony. Blub.
The bill, adopted by a 61 to 36 vote, would facilitate judiciary procedures for an employee discriminated against on the basis of age, sex, race, religion or country of origin.
…"There is no reason anyone should take home a paycheck different from his or her coworker's based solely on that worker's gender, race, age, ethnicity or disability. And in a historically weak economy such as ours, American families can no longer afford it," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement.
"We send this to the president as soon as possible so he can sign it into law."
NY Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to Succeed Clinton
NY Governor David Paterson has chosen Representative Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the US Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton when she was made Secretary of State. I don't know anything about her, to be honest, although what I'm reading so far is not thrilling me:
[Gillibrand] is known for bold political moves and centrist policy positions…Huzzah for Paterson—but it doesn't do the rest of the country a fat lot of good if an unreliable Dem is sent to replace a Dem juggernaut in a caucus that needs all the party loyalists it can get.
Ms. Gillibrand, who has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, is controversial among some of the party's more liberal leaders downstate.
Ms. Gillibrand's selection was a careful political calculation by the governor, who will run for his second term as governor in 2010, when Ms. Gillibrand will also be on the ballot. The choice reflects Mr. Paterson's thinking that his selection should be someone who can help him attract key demographics — in Ms. Gillibrand's case upstate New Yorkers and women.
On the Issues paints what is best described as an incomplete picture; she hasn't been around long. And although she looks like a good ally on women's issues, having voted for access to and funding for contraception and to reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment, as Pam notes, she's not a good ally on LGBTQI issues, having "voted against the repealing of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' legislation, opposed legislation that would grant equal tax treatment for employer-provided health coverage for domestic partners, opposed legislation to grant same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents the same immigration benefits of married couples, and opposed legislation to permit state Medicaid programs to cover low-income, HIV-positive Americans before they develop AIDS."
Given the strong ally who's vacating the seat, that's not happy-making.
Grumble.
UPDATE: Flip-flop:
Last night likely Senate pick Kirsten Gillibrand spoke to Empire State Pride Agenda Executive Director Alan Van Capelle about issues important to New York's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.I'll take it.
"After talking to Kirsten Gillibrand, I am very happy to say that New York is poised to have its first U.S. Senator who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples," said Van Capelle. "She also supports the full repeal of the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) law, repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) and passage of legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people. While we had a productive discussion about a whole range of LGBT concerns, I was particularly happy to hear where she stands on these issues."
UPDATE 2: Shaker Ryan (who also gets the hat tip for the first update; sorry I forgot!) sends the following along with the note, "It appears that she was bamboozling her social con constituents." Heh. Naturally, it's good to see her talking the talk; time will tell if she'll walk the walk.
IO: A decent portion of our readers are gay. What's your position on same-sex marriage?FWIW, I don't agree with that strategy, particularly, but I will note that she appears to recognize that the "title" is not incidental, that the conferring of rights is not de facto the same as equality.
KG: What I'd like to do legislatively, on the federal level—and I think we'll be able to do this with the new president—is actually make civil unions legal in all 50 states, make it the law of the land. Because what you want to fundamentally do is protect the rights and privileges of committed couples, so that they can have Medicare benefits, visit in the hospitals, have adoption rights. All [the] things that we give to married couples, committed gay couples should be eligible for. And then the question of whether you call it a marriage or not, what you label it, that can be left to the states to decide.
[It's] so culturally oriented. My mom's generation, they want their gay friends to have every right and privilege that they should be eligible for as a married couple, but they feel uncomfortable calling it marriage. To them, a marriage is a religious word that they learned from the Catholic Church: It's a covenant between a man, a woman, and God. So they feel uncomfortable with the word. But they don't feel uncomfortable with the rights and privileges.
I think the way you win this issue is you focus on getting the rights and privileges protected throughout the entire country, and then you do the state-by-state advocacy for having the title.
The Audacity of Trope
Yesterday, as people who recognize women's autonomy, equality, and essential right to make decisions about their own bodies reaffirmed their commitment to defending Roe v. Wade on its 36th anniversary, thousands of misogynist tools who don't trust or respect women marched in Washington to oppose the landmark SCOTUS decision.
And because they are tragic assholes with a corrupt grasp of history and an even more dysfunctional sense of irony, they invoked Lincoln's position on slavery in a brutally galling attempt to make the anti-abortion case.
The inauguration of a president who supports abortion rights fired up the annual March for Life yesterday, with activists warning of new, more liberal legislation and urging President Obama to view abortion as a civil-rights issue akin to slavery.Just to be totally clear: They're urging him to "view abortion as a civil-rights issue akin to slavery," with the fetuses as the slaves, not the women they would see forcibly carrying unwanted pregnancies to term.
Looking east at the thousands of marchers gathered from Fourth to Seventh streets on the Mall, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said Obama needed to be reminded "that the reason we built that monument to president Abraham Lincoln is because he saw the humanity in a slave that the Supreme Court said was not human." Nothing could make Obama less like Lincoln than "forgetting that the unborn are also little children of God," he added.Hmm. Thing is, subjugating women to sustained psychological and emotional abuse, bodily risk, and physical labor on the basis of the intrinsic characteristic of their being women is pretty much a proximate fucking opposite, in concept if not in scope, of freeing people who had been enslaved on the basis of the intrinsic characteristic of their being black.
So, maybe it's not totally accurate that "nothing" could make Obama less Lincolnish [/Colbert] than "forgetting" a spiritual concept that has no relevance in secular law.
There's almost too much that's crazy-makingly objectionable about this entire line of reasoning (the general stupidity, the breathtaking irony, the appropriation of the civil rights struggle) to pinpoint what's most offensive, but the winning offense has got to be the wholesale and heartless refusal to acknowledge the vast role that unwanted pregnancies played in the perpetuation of American slavery.
Rape, unwanted pregnancies, slow deaths from infections after unsanitary makeshift abortions, dangerous childbirths, babes ripped from their mothers' arms, sold as chattel, generations of splintered families, family trees with branches that dead-end into rape after rape…
Freedom from slavery and freedom from unwanted pregnancy was one and the same thing for generations of black American women. The anti-choicers' attempt to rip the two asunder, and disregard the latter out of hand, effectively disappears women from the history of slavery.
Which is no surprise—since women have never been a material component of anti-choice rhetoric—but still resoundingly appalling nonetheless.
And let us take a moment to appreciate the tremendous audacity of disappearing black women from the history of slavery with the express purpose of being able to use slavery as a cudgel against the first African-American president.
Utterly shameless.
And equally brainless. The foundation of freedom is choice. Emancipation (ostensibly) confers the ability to make choices for oneself—where to live, who to love, for whom to work, what job to do for what price.
Whether to have children and how many.
Removing choice is not liberation. It never has been; it never will be. If the anti-abortion brigade really wanted to "free the fetuses," they would spoil women with choices—educational choices, employment choices, contraceptive choices, emergency contraceptive choices, healthcare choices, childcare choices, social service choices.
But giving anything to women has never been their modus operandi. They'd rather yell bullshit at the president—who is, in the end, still just another dude who will never have to make this particular choice for himself.
Hey Your Racist
According to Rush Limbaugh you are a racist if:
1) You're a member of the news media.
2) You voted for Obama.
3) You support Obama in any way, shape, or form.
4) If you watched any of the inauguration coverage this week.
Why, you ask? Because Obama's father was black. "Because his father was black, because this is the first black president." Well, just allow me to post the whole quote:
You know racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left. We're witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We're being told that we have to hope he succeeds. That we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend forward, backward, whichever. Because his father was black, because this is the first black president. We've got to accept this. The racism that everybody thinks exists on our side of the aisle has been on full display throughout their primary campaign.Okay. I am going to admit that I really don't understand Limbaugh's point. Is he saying that is you're a fan of President Obama you must hate white people? (And would the inverse there be that if you liked Bush you must therefore hate people of color?) I don't know. Maybe he's saying racism is no big deal. All except that directed at white people like Limbaugh or his cohort Hannity. Because airing inauguration coverage of America's first African American president is racist against white people. Or something. Fuck, I don't know.
What I do know is that Rush Limbaugh "needs to sit down and drink a big ol' cuppa Hush Up Now."
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Our World is Not Free if Women Are Not Free
"We cannot have a free, prosperous, peaceful, progressive world if women are treated in such a discriminatory and violent way. … I take very seriously the function of the State Department to lead our government, through the Office of Human Trafficking, to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery, we have wage slavery, and it is primarily a slavery of girls and women. … We're going to have a very active women's office, a very active office on trafficking; we're going to be speaking out consistently and strongly against discrimination and oppression of women, and slavery in particular—because I think that is in keeping not only with American values, as we all recognize, but American national security interests as well."
Question of the Day
If you could live for one day in the imaginary world of any TV show, which would you choose?
Or not imaginary (or imaginaryish), I guess, if you choose a reality show.
I'm going to guess my answer is fairly obvious. Wev. Don't judge me. It's genetic.
I Write Letters
Dear Hollywood,
I am officially calling a moratorium on straight male actors "playing gay" until they can do it without acting like it's a Big Fucking Deal.
I mean, you know, good for Jim Carrey for talking about his internalized homophobia, but no one needs a humanitarian award for making out with Ewan McGregor, okay?
Additionally, the moratorium will not be lifted until gay-playing hetero superheroes can refrain in toto from describing kissing another man as prickly, scratchy, stubbly, or itchy, or making reference in any other way (e.g. "beard burn") to the skin irritation allegedly involved in every dude-on-dude liplock.
Please also note that love scenes are not to be described as "gross" or any equivalent, nor men as "smelly" or any equivalent, particularly by men who, in their daily lives, expect women to engage in sex acts with them without thinking they are "gross" or "smelly," and who simultaneously want us to believe they're "cool" with homosexuality.
Thank you, and have a queer day.
Warmest regards,
Liss
That's the Most Optimistic Rug I've Ever Seen!
by Shaker Constant Comment
Am I the only one surprised that W left his beloved rug behind? Does that mean Obama is a happy and optimistic person, too?
[Shakesville rewind.]
Obama Marks Anniversary of Roe by Affirming Commitment to Protecting It
Statement of President Obama on the 36th Anniversary of Roe v. WadePretty damn good. I would have liked to see the list following "To accomplish these goals" include "actively work to reduce sexual assault" and "expand access to affordable healthcare" (since about one-fourth of American abortion-seekers cite their own health or possible health problems with the fetus as reasons for the termination, owing to concerns including "a lack of prenatal care").
On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women's health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose.
While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make. To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services.
On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work; and to have no limits on their dreams. That is what I want for women everywhere.
Still. This is the first time the American president has affirmed his commitment to Roe in almost a decade.
[Via. H/T to Shaker rrp.]
Seen
A large yard sign reading: Jesus 4 President!
A. No.
B. No.
C. November 4, 2008.
D. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5.
E.
RIP INRI
F. No.
Clinton Arrives at the State Department
Transcript: A solid minute of wild applause. Cheers. Shouting. Whistling. Wanton enthusiasm. General revelry. Followed by Clinton saying: "And I will do all that I can, working with you, to make it abundantly clear that robust diplomacy and effective development are the best long-term tools for securing America's future. [edit] I want you to think outside the proverbial box. I want you to give me the best advice you can. I want you to understand there is nothing that I welcome more than a good debate [cheers] and the kind of dialogue that will make us better. [edit] So I take this office with a real sense of joy and responsibility, commitment and collaboration. And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's get to work!"
[H/T to Shaker Constant Comment.]
