Shakesville

Love. This.

[Summary: Man's voice is heard chanting a cheerleading cheer; elderly woman peers out window and sees man cheering. The camera pulls back to reveal that he is cheering with his young daughter, who's dressed up like a cheerleader. A voiceover says: "Smallest moments can have the biggest impact on a child's life. Take time to be a dad today."]

I love this PSA from the White House's fatherhood initiative for all the reasons Tracey outlines here, most notably:

I thought this was a fantastic twist on the dad-playing-catch-with-son scenario we usually see to represent fathers' involvement with their kids. Even though this commercial might otherwise be criticized by showing a girl doing a very stereotypical "girl" activity like cheerleading, I actually prefer it this way over showing the dad and daughter doing something more stereotypically male, because the role reversal of the dad is much more subversive here than if the little girl had been playing, say, basketball with him.

Aside from being more subversive, it's also important to feature a "girl thing" because, irrespective of whether it's good or bad, the reality is that little girls frequently do stereotypically "girl" activities. In fact, I'll submit that girls in households including fathers with traditional ideas about gender are more likely to be involved in stereotypically "girl" activities, which those same traditional fathers are less likely to engage. So it's imperative to show fathers engaged with daughters doing "girl things," and encourage interaction on what is clearly their daughters' terms.

Monday Blogaround

Your big gay blogaround has a case of the Mondays!

Recommended Reading:

On International Women's Day (which was yesterday, and I totally missed it, although I did feel very much like an International Woman all day), go see Katecontined for a lovely pic and comment, and Echidne with her usual brilliance, and Renee for the rest of her International Women's Day series.

Andy: Gay Rights Activist Questions Hillary Clinton at EU

Matttbastard: A Roundabout Way of Calling David Brooks, Roger Cohen, David Broder, and Jay Leno Fatuous Assholes (Because They, um, ARE Fatuous Assholes)

Marcella: Proof That Men Who Say Rape Is Only a Women's Issue Are Fools

And heads-up, Losties: Rachel's latest recap is up!

Leave your links in comments...

Watchmen: The Triggering

By way of follow-up to the previous thread, I saw Watchmen this weekend, and I wanted to share my assessment of the sexual assault content.

Please note two things: 1. This isn't the general geek thread. That's below. Go there to talk about the film generally, its adherence to the graphic novel, etc. 2. There will be SPOILERS aplenty in both threads, so consider yourself warned. For that reason, the rest of this post is below the fold.

So, there was some debate in the original thread about whether The Comedian actually raped Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre or just attempted to rape her, with some people suggesting it had to be a "completed rape" for the reason that The Comedian is revealed to be Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II's father. This is the deal: It is an attempted and non-completed rape, and, in flashbacks, we learn that Sally had what appears to be a consensual sexual encounter with The Comedian, which resulted in her pregnancy.

Though Sally's husband classifies the second encounter as The Comedian "finishing the job" of the attempted rape, he says Sally "allowed him" to "finish the job." And Sally does not say, "I didn't allow him" or protest in any way that it was nonconsensual, but instead insists, "It was only one time." Sally also later admits a fondness for The Comedian, based on his having been the father of her child—which seems bizarre if the child was a product of rape. A woman generally don't develop a fondness for a rapist just because he's fathered a child she loves.

Of course, women generally doesn't develop a fondness for attempted (or actual) rapists and have consensual relationships with them later, either—despite what pop culture and literature would have us believe. The rape victim falling in love with her rapist is a pervasive narrative, and probably my most loathed theme in mainstream entertainment. It's a soap opera favorite; one of the most popular daytime soap couples of all time, General Hospital's Luke and Laura, were married in one of the highest-rated soap episodes of all time—having fallen in love after he raped her. The entire premise of Ian McEwan's Atonement is centered on an eyewitness misidentifying a rapist, while the rape victim keeps schtum and marries her rapist. It's absurdly ubiquitous, and I was especially disgusted to see the narrative included in a movie that will be popular with young men.

Many of whom in the same theater as me, by the way, laughed uproariously during the attempted rape scene. In fact, the two biggest laughs of the movie, in the sold-out IMAX theater in which I saw it, were the scene of a woman being brutalized and almost raped and one of the very few people of color in the film being doused with boiling oil. Hilarious!

The attempted rape scene, which was extremely difficult to watch, was not the only sexual assault content in the film. Rorschach identifies his click moment as coming face-to-face with a murderous pedophile, and Ozymandias is clearly suggested to be a pedophile when Nite Owl II discovers a file in his office labeled "Boys."

But the most triggering scene for me, which I've not even seen mentioned in any discussion of the sexual assault content of Watchmen, is the scene in which Dr. Manhattan and Laurie are having sex, and the camera is on Laurie's face as Dr. Manhattan's hands caress her—two hands, then four, then six… Laurie suddenly realizes what's happening and jumps up, then yells at Dr. Manhattan that she hates it when he does that. It is in this scene that we realize Dr. Manhattan can replicate himself, and he has sent several versions of himself to fuck Laurie while he works in his lab. Laurie makes clear that she has expressed her rejection of this version of sex, has made clear she does not consent to it, and Dr. Manhattan merely shrugs and notes he doesn't know what turns her on anymore.

[Huge laughs!]

I not only found the scene not funny, but felt that it was rather explicit rape apologia and victim-blaming. Dr. Manhattan was evidently violating Laurie's trust and expressed wishes in a sexual context, and then justified his actions by pointing to her alleged failure. That this scene was played for laughs between two people in an existing relationship with an otherwise consensual sex life is deeply upsetting to me—again, especially in a movie that will be popular with young men, and especially in light of my earlier post which includes a graphic noting filly 49% of Britons feel a woman is totally or partially responsible for being raped if she "does not clearly say NO to the man."

Very upsetting stuff.

Iain and I were talking about the inappropriate laughter (and framing) after the film, and he recalled seeing A Clockwork Orange in the theater soon after it was uncensored in Britain. There was much laughter at the infamous rape scene, much to his chagrin, which haunts him still.

I noted the irony that it's often sitting in the audience of films about how fucked up humanity is that one really gets a sense of how fucked up humanity is.

Watchmen: Open Geek Thread

As promised in the comments of my previous post, here's an open thread for Watchmen fans and/or viewers to discuss the film generally.

Please note two things: 1. This isn't the follow-up to the triggering thread. That's above. Go there to discuss about the sexual assault content. 2. There will be SPOILERS aplenty in both threads, so consider yourself warned. For that reason, my general review is below the fold.

Okay, so I haven't read the graphic novel, and I only had the vaguest outlines of the plot going into this film, due to my fiercely deliberate avoidance of most info about the film. I went into it with some pleasant anticipation and some dread about the sexual assault content, and I came out of it pretty dissatisfied.

The Good Stuff: Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. I have loved JEH since I was a kid, when he was Moocher in Breaking Away and Kelly in The Bad News Bears, two films I must have watched 1,000 times each. He wasn't doing a hell of a lot worth a damn for a lot of years, until he showed up again in Little Children in 2006, a brilliant and deeply disturbing film in which he plays a convicted pedophile. He's fantastic in the film; he was nominated for an Oscar for the role, and it revived his career. JEH is one of the main reasons I wanted to see Watchmen—and he didn't disappoint.

The brief scene of the lesbian superhero (whose handle I didn't even catch, but I believe is called Silhouette—thanks, IMDb!) replacing the sailor in the iconic war photo was superb. (Too bad I didn't get to know fuck-all else about this character before it was revealed she and her girlfriend had been murdered by homobigots.)

It looked great. The special effects were above-average, and I quite like Zack Snyder's stylized direction. I really loved the look of 300, and Watchmen was pleasing to behold, too. Snyder's wildly ambitious, which, in terms of the film's visuals, is a big positive.

The Bad Stuff: Snyder's wildly ambitious, which, in terms of making this film at all, and trying to stuff the story into one installment, is a big negative. I'm reminded of Peter Jackson's steadfast unwillingness to do LotR as one film, holding out for a studio who would grant him at least two installments. Snyder should have done the same—because whatever social commentary Watchmen was trying to make was entirely lost on me, a relatively intelligent viewer who hasn't read the graphic novel. Aside from a few passing barbs at fat liberals, and the sledgehammered message about a common enemy uniting adversaries, I've got no idea what the fucking point was.

There was too much and too little going on all at the same time—too much plot, too many threads, too little character development, too few clarifying bits of exposition. Which wasn't for a lack of exposition altogether; it just wasn't the right stuff. Or something. For example, the aforementioned murder of Silhouette and her girlfriend was included in a historical montage without any commentary—and, because we were also treated to images of citizens demanding to know "Who's watching the Watchmen?" after government interference, the image of the two women seen brutally slaughtered obliquely suggested their deaths were just, despite the fact the bodies were found under the words "Lesbian Whores" scrawled onto the wall in their blood. It all felt…incoherent.

I can imagine that those who have read the graphic novel could fill in the blanks quite effectively, but whatever made this story compelling in the graphic novel, it wasn't in the film.

Ultimately, the alternative-universe, we-won-Vietnam, Nixon-as-five-term-pres stuff just seemed like a weird distraction and unnecessary complication. But, without it, Watchmen is just a middling superhero pic about trying to save the world, its only distinguishing feature from other middling superhero pics about trying to save the world being a huge blue dong.

The rest of my review, specific to the sexual assault content is here.

Assvertising

This greasy bit of crap has been airing for some time but I had not been able to locate a sharable version of it until recently.

(obviously, I didn't name the youtube video, lol)

Really, it's just so out there that it speaks for its blatantly offensive, 30-second POS self, doesn't it?

[Assvertising: Parts 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.]

Good Morning! The World Sucks.

[Trigger warning.]

An interesting narrative emerged from among the first couple of links in my inbox this morning:

Shaker RiderOnTheStorm sent an update on the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil having called murder a raped nine-year-old's abortion to save her life and having excommunicated the little girl's mother and doctors. To the surprise of absolutely no one with two brain cells still knocking together, the Vatican has defended the decision and explicitly noted that the little girl's stepfather, who allegedly raped and impregnated her, would not be excommunicated, despite their presumption of his guilt:

[T]he accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion—the elimination of an innocent life—was more serious".

The stepfather is also suspected of repeatedly sexually assaulting the girl's teenage sister, who is disabled.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, a senior Vatican cleric and head of the Catholic church's Congregation for Bishops, explained: "It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated." This, despite the fact that the reason the abortion was granted in a country where abortion is otherwise illegal was because the little girls was pregnant with twins, which likely would have ruptured her uterus, killing her along with the fetuses. So irrespective of the fetuses' dubious "right to life," they wouldn't have fucking lived, anyway.

And from Iain, I received a link to this story about a 75-year-old woman who has been sentenced to "40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom" for mingling with unrelated men:

According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, "Fahd" and "Hadian."

Fahd told the policeman that he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.

…The court also doled out punishment to the two men. Fahd was sentenced to four months in prison and 40 lashes; Hadian was sentenced to six months in prison and 60 lashes.

The best thing that can be said about this case is that it may be slightly less objectionable than the gang rape victim who was sentenced to 200 lashes. (That sentence was eventually overturned under international pressure and one desperately hopes the same thing will happen here now that the story's being publicized.)

And Shaker Kathy sent me the link to this story, in which a man who stabbed four people to death is described as a "jilted lover" (including in the headline) and "scorned boyfriend." As Kathy points out, the definition of "jilt" is "To deceive or drop (a lover) suddenly or callously," so referring to this guy as a jilted lover (and scorned boyfriend) is to implicitly blame at least one of his victims. If only she hadn't had the unmitigated nerve to assert her autonomy and not stay indefinitely in a relationship she didn't want, she wouldn't be dead now!

Meanwhile, I read this piece over the weekend about a teenage girl who hanged herself after a former beau to whom she'd sent nude photos of herself distributed the images to their classmates, who then bullied the girl with taunts of slut, whore, and other shaming language.

Finally, Jess sent me a heads-up about the appalling findings of a British Home Office study on violence against women, like, for example, that 43% of respondents saying a woman is "partly" or totally to blame for being raped if she "flirted heavily" with her rapist beforehand, or 26% saying she's "partly" or totally to blame if is "out in public wearing sexy or revealing clothes":

Here's the point, in case anyone hasn't cottoned on by now: It doesn't matter if you're a raped little girl facing imminent death, or an elderly woman just being brought a bit of bread, or a woman who asserts her independence, or a woman who plays by the pornifying rules of the patriarchy, or a woman who looks good, or a woman who looks bad, or a woman who flirts, or a woman who turns a man away, or any kind of woman at all, really: No matter what happens to you, it's your fucking fault and you fucking deserved it, you dirty whore.

Sometimes it really feels like there aren't enough teaspoons in the world for this shit.

But there are. We've just got to get people to pick 'em up.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Lucy Show

Sunday Morning Airport Blogging

Chasing the sun on a flight from Philadelphia to Madrid, 2007*

Happy Sunday, Shakers! I've been a bit AWOL lately, as I was preparing to travel to my parents' to help out while my mother recovers from her shoulder replacement. I am now awaiting my flight at Pittsburgh International Airport's gate D81. I love this airport; it is one of the few to have free wireless internet access.

I will be pretty busy both helping my mother and doing the things she usually does, which includes a lot of caring for her grandkids. So I may not be as present in comments as I'd like. But I'll still be around, posting as I can. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, folks!

____
* Sorry; it's a bit confusing to use a photo of an entirely unrelated trip for this post, but the light is terrible in Pittsburgh this morning and there are no good shots to be had on the spot. Also, I love this image and find it uplifting!

Wearing Fur While Female

Oh, PETA. There was a time when I wanted to sympathize with you--really, there was--but between the nekkid-lady beauty contests and the hiring strippers ("the girls of Rick's cabaret") as spokesmodels, I just can't. You argue that people shouldn't eat meat--by treating women like meat. And even when you're not portraying women as pigs (possibly NSFW) or putting them in cages or just randomly parading them naked for male titillation, you still manage to get in a sexist barb or two.

I'm talking, this time, about your annual "Worst-Dressed Awards"--an opportunity to shame female celebrities for failing to meet impossible standards of youth and beauty (and, oh yeah, for wearing fur). In fairness, there is one fur-wearing men--Kanye West, whose "quirky suits" you "like"--on your list, but your ageist, sexist and downright disturbing treatment is reserved for fur-wearing females like Madonna ("We know that she's on the prowl for a young cub, but someone needs to tell Madge that wearing fur doesn't make you a cougar"), Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson ("maybe Mary-Kate and Ashley think their matronly wardrobe will deflect the gossip about bulimia"), Maggie Gyllenhaal ("Maggot," in PETA's breathtakingly clever parlance) and Elizabeth Hurley ("desperate"... a "faded siren"). Apparently, wearing fur is bad for everyone--but wearing fur while female justifies the most venomous, over-the-top misogynist mockery.

The Virtual Pub Is Open

TFIF, my deviant beauties!

Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!

Memorable Reviews

Deeks just emailed me the opening line of Roger Ebert's review of the new film Fired Up:

After the screening of "Fired Up!," one of my colleagues grimly observed that "Dead Man" was a better cheerleader movie. That was, you will recall, the 1995 Western starring Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, Billy Bob Thornton and Iggy Pop. I would give almost anything to see them on a cheerleader squad.

To which I replied:

Ebert is a gem. Did you ever read his zero-star review of Freddy Got Fingered? (If not, you must read it right now.) It contains my favorite line from a movie review evah: "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."

To which Deeks replied with another classic Ebert quote from his review of the dreadful North:

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Which I will see and raise a quip from Steven Hyden's review of the abysmally-reviewed Meet the Spartans:

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the writer-director-producer team behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, and now Meet The Spartans, have a nice racket going. At the beginning of the year, during the pre-Oscar doldrums when studios quickly and quietly dump failed projects into theaters to die ignoble deaths, Friedberg and Seltzer release another half-assed, quickie spoof flick. They've done it for three years in a row, and the strategy so far has led to big opening weekends followed by precipitous drop-offs once word gets around that, shockingly, their movies are fucking terrible.

What lines from movie reviews have stuck with you over the years?

Not Assvertising!

by Shaker KaterTot

This is the first trans-inclusive ad for a mainstream service of any type that I've ever seen, and on those grounds is pretty exciting. The ad doesn't normalize the woman's identity; in fact, the storyline rests entirely upon the premise that she is different and her community recognizes it. Furthermore, the bank then shamelessly self-promotes for being so progressive—don't we all want to bank with these inclusive capitalists, etc. However, it frankly discusses transphobia while encouraging open conversation. It portrays someone coming to terms with their own prejudice and actually apologizing for it. And for that, it deserves recognition.

[Transcript is in the video.]

Watchmen: The Trigger Warning

So, here's the thing. There's a rape scene in Watchmen. By all accounts, it's a fairly graphic one, too. Shaker Jessika emails (which I am posting with her permission):

I know that you and several other Shakers are geeks and have probably already read the Watchmen graphic novel. But for those who haven't, and are going to see the movie this weekend, I thought it might be good to give Shakers a major trigger warning about the movie, and graphic novel if they were going to read it instead. The Comedian beats and rapes the first Silk Spector. I haven't seen the movie yet (going Saturday), but from what spoilers I've read, the rape is in the movie and it's graphic. I read that Snyder wanted to make it disturbing to fit with the story and characters, not try to make light of it or sexy or anything.

I've barely read anything on the movie scene beyond stories from earlier in the year confirming it was in there and how brutal it was, and then it was mostly on geek sites. Since Watchmen is getting so much attention this week, and I'm sure some Shakers will go not knowing about that scene, it would be good to let them know it's in there.

So, consider yourselves warned. (And thank you, Jessika.)

I haven't read the graphic novel, and Iain and I are planning to see the movie this weekend with Todd, KennyBlogginz, and their mum. Earlier, I spoke to KBlogz, who's read the graphic novel, about the rape scene, as he also wanted to give me a heads-up about it (because he is awesome), and he said it's not presented (at least in the book) as anything but a ghastly crime. And, FWIW, the director of the film, Zack Snyder, treated the rape in 300 really well, in my estimation.

Personally, I'm glad to have been forewarned. It's not that I can't watch rape scenes, especially if they're integral to the story, but I do prefer to be prepared for them in a way I don't need to be for other emotionally demanding plot points. I figured there would be Shakers who wanted/needed to be forewarned, too—and anyone who considered finding out about a rape scene a "spoiler" ain't at the right blog, anyway.

Dear NYT Style Section

A suggestion: If you're going to give a "trend" a name--e.g. "glam-mas," a cutesy term for grandmothers who don't want to spend their time taking care of their adult children's kids--you might want to find more than ONE example of a woman who refuses to babysit for her adult daughter. (Grandfathers, needless to say, are assumed to have more important things to do.)

On the other hand, I suppose the existence of even a single older woman for whom taking on the role of parent to a needy newborn--again--isn't the pinnacle of human experience proves the point. Grandmas yesterday knew their place--serving as unpaid babysitters, cooks, and maids to their children's children. "Glam-mas" today? Too busy doing selfish things--traveling or working or "put[ting] their romantic lives ahead of their grandchildren," as one psychologist tut-tuts in the story--to "be bothered."

Quote of the Day

"When is a tax cut for 98 percent of taxpayers portrayed as a tax increase? When some of the small handful of people whose taxes will go up happen to control the nation's news media."—Jamison Foser, in his latest column for Media Matters, which is a must-read.

Daily Kitteh

Sophs

The This Is My Flaw Project

In yesterday's QotD thread about our physical "flaws," Shaker Keori commented: "Some days all the clichés about real beauty being on the inside just don't cut it." And all I could think was: Do they ever cut it? I mean, seriously—has anyone really ever felt better about being criticized for on judged on hir appearance by a total stranger because a loved one assures hir zie's a good person, lol?

It's a temporary fix at best, maybe a salve that takes away the immediate sting of a direct assault on one's esteem—but if you've got a socially unacceptable flaw, if you sport some evident deviation from the Beauty Standard, you could be the best human being on the planet and it isn't going to insulate you from some asshole shouting "Moo!" at your fat ass from a passing car or asking "What's wrong with your face?" or launching any one of a zillion juvenile epithets—pizzaface! snaggletooth! gimp! freak!—in your general direction just because you have the temerity to be publicly Less Than Perfect.

Being beautiful on the inside doesn't change the fact that it's still a radical act to look different and be happy in this culture. If you're obviously, undisguisably Less Than Perfect, you're not only meant to be unhappy, but deeply ashamed of yourself, projecting at all times an apologetic nature, indicative of your everlasting remorse for having wrought your monstrous self upon the world. You are certainly not meant to be bold, or assertive, or confident—and should you manage to overcome the constant drumbeat of messages that you are ugly and unsexy and have earned equally society's disdain and your own self-hatred, should you forget your place and walk into the world one day with your head held high, you are to be reminded by the unsolicited comments and contemptuous looks of perfect strangers that you are not supposed to have self-esteem; you don't deserve it. Being publicly Less Than Perfect and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably Less Than Perfect and happy is an act of both will and bravery.

That is the world in which we live. And being beautiful on the inside doesn't fucking change that.

Even believing, despite a near-constant bombardment of messaging to the contrary, that you are beautiful on the outside, irrespective of one's alleged flaws (and maybe even because of them!), doesn't fucking change that—because, as Shaker Rana pointed out in the aforementioned thread, it's not just our opinions of ourselves with which we live: "I basically do like my body, even with the unruly leg hair and crooked teeth. If I could just be, and not be judged by other people, I'd have no problems with it. I'd smile my crooked yellow smile and dance around on my bare hairy legs and everyone would smile back. Unfortunately, I have to live with the world's judgment as well as my own."

Which is why it is imperative to challenge the criteria by which the world judges beauty, to look at the profoundly unreasonable, totally crazymaking, and inherently condemnatory Beauty Standard in its increasingly unachievable face and tell it to fuck off.

Part of challenging the BS (heh) entails loving ourselves for who we are, embracing our Less Than Perfectness and resisting the urge to conform to any standard that purports to be universally attainable. The only objective to which we should aspire is our own healthfulness, which is unique to every individual person.

Part of it is learning to critique the BS on the basis of its asserted universality, rather than suggesting anything prescribed by the BS is intrinsically bad, or that people who strive to adhere to it are somehow flawed. Demonizing thin women in a misguided attempt to un-demonize fat women, or declaring marginalized men (e.g. fat men) "real" men at the expense of other men, or ignoring that it takes not just both will and bravery, but also privilege, to flaunt one's rejection of cultural expectations, in order to censure people whose conformity might be an important coping strategy—all of these things are to be filed under Ur Doing It Wrong.

One of the most important bits of teaspooning we can all do is simply to refuse to judge other people's appearance, which is important both culturally and personally. Judgment is, at its roots, projection—evaluating people's deviations from a standard we endorse. We are thus quick to see our own "flaws" in others. Judgment reinforces our own shortcomings, reflects our perceived failures back to us, makes it difficult to love ourselves when we see our own supposed defects everywhere we look.

We must extend outward the same generosity, flexibility, and esteem that we should each grant ourselves to be happy in who we are. Letting go of the culturally-imposed obligation to judge everyone is hugely freeing—and it makes accepting oneself a helluva lot easier. It's a gift to ourselves, and to everyone else who steps into our gazes.

And a final part of challenging the BS is filling the void of alternatives with deviant beauty. Like telling stories about ourselves subverts dominant narratives about marginalized people, showing pictures of our imperfect bellies, and our melasmas, and our excessively lined hands, and our head-to-toe fatty-balattyness, and all our other "flaws." That's why projects like Adipositivity and Men in Full and This Is Beautiful are so essential.

And to that end, I invite you to submit a photo (or photos) of your flaw(s) to Shakesville's This Is My Flaw Project. Your flaw may be something that bothers you, or it may be something that is a flaw only according to the arbitrary guidelines of the BS that you actually quite like about yourself, a flaw you happily flaunt. Please email them to thisismyflaw-at-hotmail-dot-com.

(If you would like to be identified when they're posted, let me know and include your Shakesville handle. If you don't want to be identified, that's totally okay—and I promise no one else will see who sent them besides me.)

In coming days, I will post all the pictures I receive in a gallery of our own deviant beauty for all of us to admire. Because Less Than Perfect doesn't mean less than.

And because sometimes a teaspoon is a camera.

Friday Blogaround

Sock it to me, Shakers!

Recommended Reading:

Lauredhel: G'day to the Quake Zone

Twisty: Spinster Aunt Curls Lip as Sexploitation Reports Pour in and Jerks Bloviate

Boehlert: Laura Bush's Former Flak Continues to Embarrass LA Times

Latoya: If You Buy Becks Modeling Clay, We Can End Racial Strife!

Lisa: Normalizing Normal Breasts [NSFW]

Mannion: This Isn't Me, I Swear...

And Renee continues her interview series with Hexy and Cara!

Leave your links in comments...

Fear and Loathing in California

I've got a new piece up at CifA about the Prop 8 hearings yesterday in California:

Watching and listening on TV to the attorney for the sponsors of Prop. 8, Ken Starr – last seen feverishly masturbating over a Beltway tryst and a stained blue dress – speak in his yawn-inducing monotone about revisions versus amendments, what struck me most was how passionless it all was. We're talking about people's lives, and family and sex and romance and love, and people's right to have that love legally recognized – everything we associate with emotion and intimacy and the most fundamental expressions of our humanity. Yet all of that was being very carefully ignored, talked around in this dreadfully staid and formal way.

It made me want to run into that courtroom and shout and gnash my teeth and stomp my feet, just to inject some semblance of passion into the proceedings.

(If I could simultaneously have drowned out Starr's inserting into the record such laughably absurd asides as "Each of us is a minority – a minority of one" and "Proposition 8 doesn't invalidate – it merely denies recognition" in that condescending cadence he picked up at the Bobby Jindal School of Speaking Good, it would have been even better.)

Naturally, I know that a courtroom isn't the place for that sort of thing – that justice isn't meant to be meted out on the basis of emotional entreaties – so I didn't expect fists pounding against podiums. Yet there was something somehow indecent about the calm, abstract, detached legal proceeding meant to consider a thing born of the messy vulgarity of irrational fear and raw hatred.

Read the whole thing here.

Numbers of the Day

651,000. The number of jobs lost nationally last month.

4.4 million. The number of jobs lost since the recession started in December 2007.

8.1%. The national unemployment rate.

25. The number of years since the national unemployment rate has been that high.

Fuck.