Few hot commercials from '83 in there, too!
Question of the Day
What is the worst movie title of all time?
I'm going to go with Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which just flat-out sucks. The title, that is. I've never actually seen the movie. (Though I suspect it flat-out sucks, too.)
A close second is Gas-s-s-s, which was the promotional title of Roger Corman's 1971 crapfest also known as Gas! and It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It, but that at least gets points for being funny. Plus, Bud Cort (who played Harold) was in it. So extra points for that, too.
Number of the Day
A nonillion. The number of times I believe I've listened to Glasvegas' "Go Square Go" this week.
[Lyrics below.]
This is such a consummately Scottish song. If I close my eyes, I can imagine myself in The Queens Arms in Edinburgh (no disrespect to the Glaswegians in question) with "Go Square Go" blaring from the jukebox on the same set of coins that chose "Tubthumping," "Come On Eileen," and The Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night," all of which I'm certain I've heard at least twice in every goddamned Scottish pub I've ever had a pint.
A "square go," by the way, is a Scottish term for an arranged fistfight. When I asked Iain if he'd ever had any square goes back in the day, he gave me a look as if to say, "Ye dae ken I grew up a working class Scottish lad, yeah? We've met, yeah?" Apparently, his first square go was at the ripe old age of seven, and his last was at 23. I asked him if he'd ever won any, to which he snorted and muttered, "Yes I did, fank ye very much!"
if he wants to fight you
at the school gates
half past four grab your bag
don't you be late
if he wants to hit you
hit you in the face
if he wants to hurt you
in front of your mates
if he wants you to run away
run away run away
don't you fucking run away
go square go!
go square go!
go square go!
go square go square go!
don't you wait for the bell
to ring ding-a-ling-a-ling
one step forward then a
bada-bada-bing
don't you make me
go down to the pub
with all my mates knowing
some individual smashed you up
you know its something
that you will have to face
face to face
man to man
here and now
biff bang pow
go square go!
go square go!
go square go!
go square go square go!
i don't really feel too good
my heart is beating faster
my dad told me
not to come home
if i don't kill this bastard
my dad is right, my dad is right
my dad is right, my dad is right
win, lose, or draw this one
if i don't fight i can't go home
here we, here we
here we here we
here we here we fucking go
here we, here we
here we here we
here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
here we here we here we fucking go
Oh Dear
Transcript:Thanks to Shaker Constant Comment.
Ricky Gervais: Blah blah something totally inappropriate.
Elmo: Zuh? Buh? Wuh?
Gervais: Blah blah something totally inappropriate.
Elmo: OMG my thin veil of professional children's entertainer is falling.
Complete collapse.
Daily Kitteh
Sophs' fuck-you face isn't quite as good as Tilsy's just yet...
I Am Now in a Permanent State of Creeped Out
(Trigger Warning)
Okay, fair warning. This is going to make your skin crawl so much, you may suddenly notice it's several hundred miles away and your skeletal ass is shivering in your chair while you do your best Frank from "Hellraiser" impression. Apparently, the incredible creepiness of the "Daddy's your boyfriend" purity balls isn't quite fucked-up enough; I had no idea what I was in for when I read this post over at NMMNB: Tying Daddy's Shoelaces to Save CivilizationVia Talk to Action, I've just been reading "Victory Through Daughters," a chilling excerpt from Kathryn Joyce's new book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.
Every quote, every link leads to either a new bucket 'o squick, or something to outrage anyone that doesn't think a woman should be permanently pregnant with a vacuum cleaner grafted to her hand.
Is "patriarchy" too strong a word? If anything, it's not strong enough -- this is a movement that believes women and girls have absolutely one purpose in life, and that is to do the most basic of household chores. Do they need to function in the larger world? Hell, they don't even need to know how to read -- and I mean that literally.Vision Forum gears its entire Beautiful Girlhood catalogue collection -- replete with tea sets, white gloves, "modesty slips," and Victorian manners books -- to the proper raising of daughters in the faith. Both Vision Forum and Reconstructionism's Chalcedon Foundation sponsor girls' essay contests on subjects such as fulfilling one's vocation as a daughter and the enduring appeal of Elsie Dinsmore -- a heroine in Martha Finley's Victorian-era children's book series, an obedient and priggishly pious daughter of the Antebellum South who aspired to be a submissive daughter and wife. (Dinsmore, as one contest winner wrote, shows daughters how "to rise up by stepping down.")
Steve provides links to the catalogues in his post. The stuff for girls is incredibly (and perhaps, predictably... Victorian Manners Books?) outrageous, and the stuff for boys is just fucking weird. I mean, I would expect them to think the only way to have a boy grow up into a proper, two-fisted hetero patriarch is to let him play with nothing but guns and war toys, but it's really creepy how they're all pre-Vietnam era. I suppose wars were better back then, before those damn hippies got involved and made us start losing. Seriously, they've got replica grenades (Grenades! Jebus!), replica field phones, WWII net helmets... I wouldn't know if I should be playing war or re-enacting scenes from Blackadder Goes Forth.
Then, because I am dumb and love punishing myself, I decided to head over and read the excerpt. I thought I knew what horror was, until I got to this (bolds are mine):Anna Sofia has served thus herself, as her father explains in an appendix interview included in So Much More so it might contain some proper male authority to address fathers. One day, while father Botkin was entertaining a “very important political leader,” he called to his daughter. Anna Sofia, then five or six, came into the room to untie and remove her father’s shoes, and she then asked the guest if she could untie his shoes as well. Years later, Geoffrey Botkin says, the politician brought the evening up, telling Botkin, “‘You know when I decided we should have more children? It was that night your sweet little daughter helped me with my shoes.’ One simple act of hospitality had eternal consequences.”
I don't think I'll ever stop throwing up. I don't know what's worse: my outrage at these girls being fucking brainwashed into being slaves for men in the name of God, or my extreme gross-out at the girls being made to do this for their fathers. The purity balls had some sort of mention of future marriage; this is simply treating daddy like hubby. Shaving is an act that's a bit intimate to share with your daughter. Eew.
The extent to which Botkin views his daughters as his ambassadors, or extensions of himself, is perplexingly hinted at when both he and Doug Phillips slip during the conference and refer to So Much More as Geoffrey Botkin’s book. This could seem either an indication of his daughters’ total identification with their father, or else, perhaps, indication of the heavy paternal hand guiding the virtuous daughters’ movement—as present in the writing of the book as it feels in every frame of the film and every still photograph taken of the two sisters.
Such lessons are repeated wide-scale at the father-daughter retreats, where daughters are given object lessons alongside the sermons through a series of ideological games, including a blindfolded obstacle course, where chains of blinded daughters were guided solely by relying on their fathers’ verbal commands; contests for fathers “wooing and winning the hearts of their daughters”; and intimacy-building “unity games” that teach daughters to serve their fathers by shaving their faces, grooming their hair, and knotting their shoes and ties. As three of Phillips’s young daughters, Jubilee, Liberty, and Faith, explained on a video posted on Vision Forum’s Web site, “Each of the games was designed to teach us a principle about our relationship with our fathers.”
If anything, I suppose we now have another example of the Patriarchy in its most basic form.
Seriously, shaving their faces?? Christ. Not only are they dominating patriarchs creating Stepford Daughters; they're fucking lazy. Untie your own fucking shoes, pops.
Random Observation
One of the strangest things about maintaining a blog in which so much of the content is detailed deconstruction of material that's misogynistic and rapetastic and homophobic and racist and otherwise ugly is that I'm constantly in the process of creation concerning stuff I want to smash with a hammer.
OMFG
DEVO announces new album to debut fall 2009
What the iconic new wave, art punk pioneers cautioned us about almost 30 years ago is no longer a humorous theory. It's pretty much fact--we now live in a devolved world that's getting wackier each and every day.I think my brain just broke. Am I dreaming this? Is this a wonderful, wonderful dream?
The fall of 2009 will bring a new DEVO studio album, their first one since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps . It'll mark their first new music since the strong fan reaction that greeted the 2007 single “Watch Us Work It,” their first new song in 18 years and one that was produced by Sweden's TeddyBears (Robyn). They're now in the studio putting the finishing touches on their new album (title TBA).
More here.
There Goes...
...the only nice thing I was ever able to say about Dick Cheney: "At least he didn't run an assassination ring!"
Caption This Photo
Rhonda was humiliated that her date's hair was so flat on prom night, of all nights.
Chuck Norris For President
I learned two things reading Chuck Norris's latest commentary at WND. First, Chuck has a thesaurus. ("George Washington advised…", "Thomas Jefferson counseled…", "Patrick Henry taught…", "John Adams declared…") Secondly, he is very, very dumb. (Everything else.)
He also plans to run for president. Of Texas.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, "But Texas isn't a country, that doesn't make any kind of sense." You're right. But keep in mind, this all seems to be Glenn Beck's idea, so sense doesn't enter into it.
Chuck firmly believes we're heading for "a second American Revolution." And that revolution will likely start in the Lone Star State.
Anyone who has been around Texas for any length of time knows exactly what we'd do if the going got rough in America. Let there be no doubt about that. As Sam Houston once said, "Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."And what's all this oppression he's so pig-biting mad about? The huge national debt, our meddling in the Middle East, "partisan politics and runaway spending," and a congress and president who "stampede" the Constitution. If you think Norris is talking about Bush, he's not. All this bad shit has only happened in the last 50 days or so. Before that everything was peachy keen.
Anyway, because the country is going down the toilet in a spree of runaway spending, rampant totalitarianism, and not enough Jesus, Norris believes Texas will secede, and in fact, has the very right to. That right has something to do with their constitution, and their once having been a republic and something about their annexation at the hands of President Tyler that gives them special dispensation to split off whenever the fuck they feel like it. Norris wasn't entirely clear on this point, and I don't suppose anyone ever pointed out that Texas did secede once, back in 1861, and, well, you know, that didn't work back then and wouldn't now.
Nonetheless, I wish you the best of luck on your election bid, Mr. Norris. I hope your platform of karate-based justice speaks to the populous!
On a side note, Chuck and Beck have also teamed up for the über-creepy and sinister sounding We Surround Them movement. We Surround Them is vaguely threatening, and threateningly vague. And kind of stupid. Among the 12 values of We Surround Them: Charity. And among the 9 principles: "Government cannot force me to be charitable." Umm, okay. I'm not sure what else it's about. Maybe that's what the TV special is for.
The whole thing is probably a lot of wankery by and for priveledged douchebags, the kind of "oh, woe is me, it is so hard to be rich and white and Christian in this country" whining Beck and his cohorts are expert at. Of course, to experience it for yourself, you'll need to tune into We Surround Them: The Unveiling this Friday on Fox. That's the event where "thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation." Cell groups? Really? I told you it sounded threatening.
Five Domestic Abuse Myths
Shaker InfamousQBert (who hat tips Feministing) sent me this (shockingly) good Newsweek article by Raina Kelley about domestic abuse myths, specifically framed around "Five mistakes we make when we talk about Rihanna and Chris Brown's relationship." I was particularly pleased with Kelley's takedown of the evo-psych bullshit that women are genetically disposed to return to abusive relationships.
One thing I'd like to note with regard to the myth of provocation, and the issue of victim-blaming, is that they can really only flourish in the absence of any discussion of the institutional misogyny inherent to a patriarchal system. Brown's cousin, Phylicia Thompson, is quoted in the article saying, "Chris was not brought up to beat on a woman. So it had to be something to provoke him for Chris to do it," the clear implication being that Rihanna provoked him.
The typical counter to this is that no one can provoke domestic violence, which may successfully shut down the conversation but doesn't sufficiently address the ubiquitous need to find a reason for why a heretofore nonviolent man would "inexplicably" become violent.
I don't doubt Thompson's assessment that Brown "was not brought up [by his family] to beat on a woman," but he was nonetheless brought up in a culture that tacitly condones domestic violence in myriad ways, starting with the routine dehumanization of women and treating images and incidents of their victimization as entertainment and humorous news-fodder.
We're all socialized in that madness, and we need to talk about that, and how that corrupts men, in order for us to ever stop looking at men's victims as the source of their provocation.
Related: Tigtog's must-read Rape myths, rape myth acceptance, and community perceptions of victims of sexual violence.
How Odd
On Tuesday, Reuters published a troubling story about the ubiquity of "child marriage" in India and its association with unwanted pregnancies and disproportionately high sterilization in young women. Researchers analyzed data from a 2005-06 national health survey, which included 22,807 Indian woman between the ages of 20 and 24, 44.5% of whom had been married between 16 and 17, 22.6% of whom had been married before they were 16, and 2.6% of whom had been married before they turned 13. The women had a high rate of sterilization because many of them had already had their desired number of children (or more) by age 25.
"Women who were married as children remained significantly more likely to have had three or more childbirths, a repeat childbirth in less than 24 months, multiple unwanted pregnancies, pregnancy termination, and sterilization," wrote the researchers, led by Anita Raj at the Boston University School of Public Health.Naturally, this story was filed in the Odd News section.
…While the practice of child marriage has decreased slowly, its prevalence remains unacceptably high, and rural, poor, less educated girls and those from central or eastern regions of the country were most vulnerable to the practice, the researchers wrote.
Such findings indicate that child marriage affects not only adolescents aged 16 to 17 years, but also large numbers of pubescent girls aged 14 to 15 years, and show that existing policies and economic development gains have failed to help rural and poor populations, the researchers wrote.
As was a story about the Vatican's pronouncement that the washing machine has done more to liberate women than the birth control pill or the right to work (an article which begins, btw, with the line: "Feminists of the world sit down before you read this."), and a story about Japan appointing "three young women as cultural envoys because they represent Japan's long-running craze for all things cute." Right alongside the usual Odd News fare, like Police seize 1,200 pounds of pot in spinach cans and German maths whiz, dead for 450 years, gets utility bill. Because child rape, religious institutional oppression, and the exploitation of women are all just wacky highjinks!
And lest anyone be tempted to unearth the tired old argument that the inclusion of these stories is not because they are meant to be "zany" and "humorous," but because they are about something unusual, let me just point out that very point of the main story in question is that "child marriage" is far too common. The whole reason for its publication is that "child marriage" isn't the oddity it should be—which makes the only purpose of its being filed under the Odd News section the freak show quality considered inherent to so many stories about women. (Especially non-Western women.)
I'll just repeat, with some additional commentary, what I've said before about this subject, because I don't know that I can explain why it's important any better or more clearly than I already have:
The misplacement of stories about various injustice done to women in the Odd News section strikes me as one of those nuances of sexism that many men don't notice or understand. To have women's experiences like this trivialized as "Odd News" is just infuriating, and being obliged to think about someone chuckling over the hilarious oddity of girls being forced into marriage and raped at 13 can make a gal angry as fuck, particularly as she recognizes that the constant positioning of humiliated women as the butt of jokes humiliates us all. This shit is important, and even as I say it, I know why it doesn't seem like it is, or should be. But it is.
The real cost of sexism to women is not in our paying a single emotional penny here for this insult and a single emotional penny there for that disgrace, but in the cumulative negative balance it leaves inside each of us. Even if we let this thing or that thing roll off of the thickened skins of our backs, we pay another penny each time; letting it roll off your back is just another way of saying keep your complaints to yourself, but it doesn't change the reality that sexism takes its toll, whether one has the ill manners of mentioning the offense or not.
As I've said before, the word that comes to my mind when I try to explain how sexism affects me is history. And I don't mean history in an academic sense, as in the history of the feminist movement, but as in my own history—a thousand threads of experience that come together to weave the fabric that I regard as my life. That history contains lots of wonderful and not wonderful things, related and unrelated things. Little things, things like seeing so many stories about the mistreatment of women culled under the heading of "Odd News," prick at a particular thread as though it's a guitar string, but instead of producing sound, it produces memory, memory of all the other times I have seen women or their stories belittled for others' amusement, memory of all the times such degradation has been used to mask the need for helping women in real need of assistance, or even just in need of being regarded with some basic fucking dignity.
I don't carry these memories with me because I want to. I carry them with me because they have left indelible prints upon me, affected my understanding of who I am to other people. I don't want to be bothered when I notice things like the treatment of women in "Odd News" features. But it doesn't matter what I want. To protect myself against this reaction is to deny my experience, to deny part of myself.
I write posts like this in the hope that they will speak to a man who has never had to think about what it means to be a woman in the world, who wonders why we can't just let pass without comment, without anger, our irritation at the way stories about women are presented in the news. But mostly, I write posts like this for other women, who see things like this every day, and feel it chipping away at them, and whose pain is assuaged only by knowing that other women share it. In other words, I write posts like this for me.
[H/T to Shaker OuyangDan. How Odd: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen.]
Here Comes the Bride(s)...
by Shaker Sarah in Chicago
Ah, it's in the air, all around us (even with the snow-drifts still piled up against our apartments), we can veritably taste it, the hints of it like being able to venture out of the house without a hat, or gloves, or scarf ... yes, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, spring is springing (though precisely how much it has sprung, is a subjective matter of course).
And, naturally, with said sprunging of spring, comes for those of us not either suddenly having sex (oh, you're not?), or cleaning, or both, are weddings. Seriously, this time of year is like someone dropped a wedding-bomb, nuking the whole hemisphere in satin and lace (not to mention all those ridiculous formal-vests that so many guys seem to think are sexy, when only a small fraction of such can be really thought of as having that property ... trust me, I know this, I'm gay, so I'm qualified ... okay, so I'm lesbian, but still).
Now, why I mention this period of the year that involves such a sudden rush to nuptials, is because I am often told by people/friends that have the strange wish to wed a member of the opposite sex (seriously, what is wrong with you people? *smile*), that they feel really conflicted about getting married, because of the fact that all their friends that are gay and/or are in same-sex relationships, can't do so as well. If you think about it, it would be even more horribly conflicting for the bisexuals out there, who know that purely by accident of having their genitals not match those of their partner, they can have access to socially approved marriage, when it just have easily could have been someone of the same sex for them, yet with precisely the same feelings.
So, I'm asked for suggestions about what those marrying opposite-sex partners can do to make sure their queer friends feel included. Because, as any queer can tell you, being at an opposite-sex wedding can be alienating, in that you really don't feel 110% that it is a safe and inclusive space for you, as they do tend to be celebrations of heterosexuality in a society that is fundamentally hetero-supremacist. They really are a statement of privilege, and as with any privileged space, one must work in order to include those that don't have access to that privilege.
I'm sure we've heard of all those celebrity straight couples that have sworn off getting married until everyone can get married, and honestly, how wonderful a statement such is to us queers. I've even got friends in heterosexual relationships that have made the same commitment. And I will admit, such a statement is a wonderful thing to me, I am not going to lie.
Because I have to say, as a lesbian woman, having straight or bisexual friends marry someone of the opposite sex does honestly leave me quite conflicted. Really, I'm dead serious about this. Bittersweet doesn't even begin to fucking cover it.
As I am so SO happy for them whenever I hear the announcement. Really, no shit, I actually am. Friends of mine committing their lives together to making each other happy and fulfilled? Why the hell wouldn't I love that? Especially if there's going to be an open bar. And good food (really, though, enough with the chicken breast, think something original up, okay? You know it's going to be as dry as bloody shoe-leather). Hell, I am one of those HRC lesbians that really does want to find a woman silly enough to walk down the aisle with me, so why on earth would I not want my friends to do similarly? So honestly, I'm not going to tell you not to marry, that you should somehow deny yourselves that joy to make a statement. Hell, we're all fighting just so we don't have people telling us who we can or can't marry, so why on earth would I turn around and do that to you?
However, despite all that happiness for my friends, and the alcohol, I do know that this is an institution that is fundamentally denied to me and those like me. Have you ever done one of those food-fasts for charity? You know, where you get money for not eating for a couple days or so? Well, it's like someone hovering a medium-rare steak with a wonderful char on the outside under your nose when you're at about hour 30 in that drive. Or driving through local Little Vietnam neighbourhood. Or grocery-shopping at about 7pm in the evening.
Yes, I know, technically all us queers CAN have the ceremony, as it is the legal recognition that is denied us, NOT the lace, vests and white folding-chairs. However, symbolism matters, and not having our society recognising our commitments does impact the meaning of those ceremonies, and how much they are seen as fitting into the life-transitions in our respective cultures. So long as we aren't civilly equal, the ceremonies will always be 'separate'. Equality, strangely enough, really turns out to matter.
But, this isn't a question of marrying or not marrying, because there are things that you can do if including your queer friends is important to you.
I do have some friends that have actively and overtly made a statement about marriage equality as either a part of their vows, or their first statement together after exchanging rings. One couple included a small blurb about their LGBT friends in the programme ... which was particularly apt for them given that when they first started dating, they were two women, even though they had become a heterosexual couple a year or so prior to the wedding. Others I know of have removed all the gendered language during their vows, as far as replacing 'wife' and 'husband', 'man' and 'woman', with such things as 'spouse', 'partner', or 'person'. Feminist as well as queer-inclusive.
Another idea is not requiring all your bridesmaids to dance with your groomsmen for the first dance. I know of one lesbian couple where both were bridesmaids at a wedding, as one of them was the sister of the bride. However, despite the fact that these two had been together longer than virtually any other person in the bride's OR groom's parties, when it came to the first dance, they were partnered up with groomsmen. Of course, they did this because it was for their sister's/in-law's wedding, and they didn't want to detract attention from her. But, naturally, all it did for those of us that knew was that it was REALLY uncomfortable. Obvious by void, if you will.
And to dancing, maybe during the first couples' dance, overtly and actively encourage your same-sex coupled friends to go out on the dance floor. Your friends may want to, but given as I said above, that this isn't going to be a space they feel completely comfortable in, you're going to have to do something overt, in terms of encouraging them, to let them know that they are welcomed.
Many of you may have queer friends who you may want to have in your bridal parties, for instance. And, for example, if she isn't a femme, forcing her into a dress, heels, make-up, nails and 3 hours of hair styling so that she's a clone of the other women in the party, isn't the most welcoming and inclusive act on the face of the earth. Remember, your wedding is as much about everyone else there as it is about you. And the booze (which will be considerably partaken in should you force your butch or tomboy friend into 6 feet of lilac faux-satin, let me tell you this right now, and I say such as a femme myself). Maybe choose a theme, or a colour, that all works and matches, and let your bridesmaids decide what variations on that they could come up with. Makes for a way less generic McMansion-style wedding at the very least, and your butch friend will look downright sexy in her suit.
One thing my sister did do that I think just speaks volumes to how kick-arse she is, was that she and her fiancé (now husband) did away with bridal and groom parties altogether. Her reasoning was that honestly she didn't want to pick between her friends about who was going to stand with her, and who wasn't, as she simply wanted them all there. And it saved money on bridesmaids dresses. I'm sure she really wasn't thinking about who wanted to wear a dress and who didn't, because my sister really isn't the kind of person to have that shit bother her in the slightest (really, she's that awesome a sister), but one effect of that decision was that more people were able to be included.
Not to mention, of course, she had the ceremony AND the dinner in one of the oldest beer breweries in New Zealand, right down on the Wellington Harbour. See? Told you she rocked.
Another thing that could be done is that instead of wedding or engagement showers where you get given shit you probably already have (as who they hell waits to move in with your partner, or even move out of home, till you're married, in this day and age?), you could encourage people to donate to marriage equality organisations. Or hell, feminist/progressive organisations in general. Same thing with wedding gifts.
Unless you really want those three different bread-makers of course. And toaster-oven are for us lesbians, as everyone knows.
And seriously, what the fuck is with the whole garter removal dance thing in front of a couple hundred people? Really? You want a symbolic act of forced heterosexual de-virgining as a part of your ceremony? In front of your parents? And if you didn't know that that was what it was ... you might really want to have a think about what your ceremony actually means. Also, maybe not have your father "give you away" either. I mean, leaving aside the complications that whole tradition introduces to same-sex weddings, from a feminist perspective, do you want the bride to be passed as property between father and husband? There are way better ways of doing this that don't involve a shipping receipt for purchase, nor excessively displaying the heterosexist nature of the ceremony.
And I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that I'm forgetting that others may suggest.
Of course, naturally, you don't have to do any of this.
Some of your queer friends may be just perfectly comfortable with the regular, run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter wedding. And honestly, you don't have to do all of this, or even a majority. Again, I'm not going to tell you what you should, or shouldn't, do regarding getting married. But, as I said above, a straight wedding IS very much a statement of privilege, and if you do want to include others, you're going to have to WORK at it. You're going to have to DO shit that you wouldn't otherwise. Merely thinking that your friends will just know that you want them to be included isn't automatically going to make that true.
And really, hopefully, eventually you'll be more likely to be invited to your friend's same-sex wedding when that happens. And seriously, more than reuseable shopping bags, more than a hybrid car, more than even being able to order off a sushi menu without numbers, nothing says how fucking hip you are than being included in a queer wedding.
Happy spring ... you can go back to your sex now ... or cleaning. Or both.
(Cross-posted.)
A Face For Radio
Yesterday I wrote a post about my iPod and what great taste in music I have (and, no, that is not a matter of opinion, it's a fact). In comments Jay in Oregon suggested I do a podcast. And I thought, what the hell, why not? (I am always looking for new and creative ways to avoid actually writing anything.) But before I spend a million hours recording my mellifluous and stentorian vox, I was wondering if anyone would actually be interested in listening to such a thing. What say you, Shakers?
(You can listen to a little test I did last night here.)
Quite a Chairperson You've Got There, GOP
So, RNC Chair Michael Steele does an interview with GQ, published yesterday, in which he bluntly says he's pro-choice:
Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?Which, of course, is Not Allowed, since recognizing the bodily autonomy of women is Republican heresy. So this morning, Steele has issued what we're all meant to pretend is a clarifying statement, but is, naturally, just a blatant bit of backpedaling:
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.
You do?
Yeah. Absolutely.
I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.Wev.
I tried to present why I am pro life while recognizing that my mother had a "choice" before deciding to put me up for adoption. I thank her every day for supporting life. The strength of the pro life movement lies in choosing life and sharing the wisdom of that choice with those who face difficult circumstances. They did that for my mother and I am here today because they did. In my view Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided and should be repealed. I realize that there are good people in our party who disagree with me on this issue.
But the Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life. I support our platform and its call for a Human Life Amendment. It is important that we stand up for the defenseless and that we continue to work to change the hearts and minds of our fellow countrymen so that we can welcome all children and protect them under the law.
Say, isn't it about time for you to apologize to Rush Limbaugh again, you pathetic marionette?
I eagerly await the creative revisionism once the rightwing discovers Steele also said in the same interview that being gay isn't a choice.
