This poll, over at HuffPo.
What do you think about the "date rape" scene in Observe and Report?
Today in WTP?
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Otissa Spoogemeister's Today Spongecakes.
Recommended Reading:
Dori: You Keep Using That Word...
Andy: Pastor Rick Warren Evades Prop 8 Conflict in Talker Cancellation
Thea: From a Mixed Race Child
Sady: Observe & Report: On Real Rape
Volcanista: Ahhhhhh
Melissa: Yentl: A Movie That Changed the World
(I just have to say I watched Yentl on a freaking loop when I was a kid. I adored that movie, and, despite the not-feminist romantic plot, in which women are divided into "smart/independent" and "pretty/marriageable," I was captivated utterly by the thought of a woman who had to pretend to be a man just to become a complete woman.)
Leave your links in comments...
Why KennyBlogginz Rulez
Because, when he goes on a late-night grocery run after an evening of bullshittin', SNL, and general hanging-outery at Shakes Manor, I get the following as a text message at like 2:00am:
That's why. Among other reasons.
P.S. lol your spunky poopcakes, Otis.
Quote of the Day
"The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. ...[B]ut then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And the battle is still to be waged. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right? ...We're going to continue to express the love for the Scripture and the principles that we find there and if we are made fools for Christ, that's okay too because our purpose is to serve him and that he be pleased."—Dr. James Dobson, vainly trying to rally the defeated troops in his farewell speech to Focus on the Family, from which he's retiring as its bigotry-spewing figurehead.
Heads-Up, Ladiez!
Mr. Petulant Petulance, Esq., who is "a sore mess from working in the garden and must take muscle relaxers and drink Sunkist and watch The View to comfort his weary bones," just emailed me:
Oscar De La Renta, on The View, just said that this century is the Century of the Woman.This arrived under the header "Your Problems Will Now Magically Go Away," lol.
Yay for you!
Brace yourselves, Shakers. Last year was widely hailed as the Year of the Woman, as we entered the worst wave of backlash I've ever experienced in my lifetime. If this is the Century of the Woman, I'm going to need chainmaille.
I Write Letters, Too
Trigger warning
Dear Mr. Ward,
I will admit that I don't watch your show, Tough Love. I think I am exceedingly glad that I don't.
Still, I was quite nonplussed when I read that you opined that one of the women on the show, Arian, was going to end up "getting raped" if her present pattern of behavior—raunchy and inappropriate, I believe were your words?—continued. She enjoys taking risks, said you, putting herself "in that position," and there are consequences! Arian should be more "classy!"
Hmmm, I thought, is Mr. Ward really suffering under the ildelusion that "classy" women don’t get raped? That rape occurs because "raunchy and inappropriate" women "ask for it?" Surely not!
But, in case you are, I'd like to point you here (or here or here) and here, where the entirety of the blog deconstructs and proves the fallacies of rape apologies like yours.
And I'd like to challenge you, Mr. Ward, to realize that "in that position" often means existing as a woman or anyone perceived as weaker or more vulnerable in a rape culture.
Yes, a rape culture.
How else would you describe a culture in which the logical consequence of acting a certain way or wearing a certain thing is understood to be the violation of one's bodily autonomy?
xoxo,
elle
P.S. Oh, and expect more letters.
H/T Alessia via belledame on twitter
The Real Deal: Introductions
by Shaker Seraph, a shameless geek who's getting through the bad times in New York City by doing temp work, playing Dungeons & Dragons, watching lots of movies, and splitting rent with an amiable soon-to-be-ex.
[Part One in this ongoing series is here.]
You know, as I started out with my review of Avatar: The Last Airbender, I found myself faced with an interesting problem. I think the saying is "too much of a good thing" – I wanted to review the show season-by-season (I don't have the stamina for a proper Fred Clarkian episode-by-episode treatment), but then I realized that simply introducing the characters and themes I wanted to talk about would make the Season 1 entry longer than I had any right to expect anyone to read. I ended up having to break it up a little, so here we are: Welcome to Avatar: The Intro Chapter.
We open with a brother and sister out fishing in Antarctic waters. The brother, Sokka (16 years old), is spear fishing, while his sister Katara (14) uses waterbending to pull a fish out of the water. Unfortunately, they get in each other's way (it's a small canoe), and both fish are lost. This leads to an argument, during which they fail to pay attention to the icebergs around them, and their canoe is crushed. The argument continues, and we discover several important things: 1) Their mother is dead, and Katara has taken on her responsibilities, a dangerous thing when it comes to washing Sokka's socks; 2) their father, chief of the Southern Water Tribe, has taken all of the able-bodied men and gone off to war, leaving them in charge of the tribe. This is not an in-name-only situation: The world is at war and children grow up fast.
In any case, while we later learn that Sokka takes his duty to defend the tribe 100% seriously, no Fire Nation troops have been spotted in the area for years, so his "defensive preparations" have mostly been excuses to avoid chores, and Katara is sick of it. The argument grows heated (as responders to the first thread noted, kudos to Katara here for explicitly calling Sokka out on his sexism), and Katara starts waving her arms around – not the best idea for an untrained waterbender. She breaks a nearby iceberg, revealing someone sealed inside. She uses Sokka's war-club to finish breaking open the ice chamber, which releases a rush of air, a column of light, a twelve-year-old boy named Aang, and his trusty flying bison Appa. Yes. Flying bison. Just go with it.
Aang has been trapped in the ice for 100 years since getting caught in a storm while out flying on Appa. That makes him the Last Airbender referred to in the title – he just plain slept through the Fire Nation's genocide of the Air Nomads.
It takes a while – pretty much all of this season – for that to sink in. For a good long time, he continues to think and behave like the person he was 100 years ago (which, from his perspective, was last night): A cheerful, friendly, extremely hyper and somewhat goofy kid with friends among all four peoples – including the Fire Nation.
He's also – although he's reluctant to admit it, at first – the Avatar. If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have survived: He used waterbending to seal himself in that iceberg back when he and Appa crashed into the ocean during that storm.
In any case, Aang falls instantly in crush with Katara, and it isn't long before the three of them (with the blessing of Gran-Gran, Sokka and Katara's only remaining relative in the village) set off on a journey to the Northern Water Tribe. Aang needs to learn more than airbending if he's going to fulfill his duties as the Avatar and restore balance to the world, and Katara is desperate to find a waterbending teacher. She's the last waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe – the others were all killed or captured by the Fire Nation back in Gran-Gran's youth, a fact that has largely killed the idea of women warriors in the tribe – and while she's very talented, she's completely untrained and very frustrated by it.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the flare that was released when Aang's iceberg broke open has been spotted by two of this season's antagonists: Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, and his uncle, General Iroh.
Zuko is your standard angry young (16 y.o.) man, out to prove himself by finding and capturing the Avatar (something generations of Firelords have striven to do). Iroh was once the crown prince of the Fire Nation and its greatest general, but he gave up both positions when his son was killed during the (failed) siege of the Earth Kingdom capitol of Ba Sing Se, which is why Zuko's father Ozai is now Firelord (incidentally, the difference in the brothers' ages – canonically, Ozai is 43 while Iroh is 64 – makes me wonder if the Fire Nation has either effective – but not foolproof – contraceptives or effective fertility treatments). Now Iroh travels the world with Zuko in disgraced retirement, doing his best to teach his nephew what he can and not giving a damn what anyone thinks as long as he has enough tea and roast duck, and he can see the sights, go shopping, and play Pai Sho.
I'd like to take the opportunity to discuss the brave, unusual thing the creators of Avatar have done here. Most of the time, when writers, cartoonists, filmmakers – storytellers in general – create a war story, they make the protagonists' side the "good guys," and completely dehumanize the "bad guys." Sometimes this is done by making the bad guys actually nonhuman – robots, aliens and Tolkien orcs, for example. Other times, they cover up the bad guys' faces so we don't connect with them as human beings as they're being massacred. After all, how bad did you really feel for the Storm Troopers on the Death Star? This is especially true in entertainment for kids. Here I'm thinking of the Disney Movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire, where villainous mooks wear gas masks for no other reason than they're going to die, and Disney doesn't want that to impinge on the Happy Ending. If nothing else, the bad guys are portrayed as entirely and irredeemably evil (except perhaps for a few with speaking roles who end up switching sides), who deserve what they get.
None of that happens here. It's true that the average Fire Nation soldier wears a face-concealing mask with their armor (more on that in the next post), but officers and the sailors on Zuko's ship do not (especially not on music night – it gets in the way of playing the soongi horn), and get this: They occasionally take them off. What's more, we get to meet civilians. Whole villages of 'em. Doing happy, harmless, human things like putting on a festival with puppets, firebending shows, and way-too-spicy food ("Ahh! Hot! Hot!" "Flaming fire flakes. Hot. What do you know." – Note that the wiseass who gives us the second line is Katara).
Of our main antagonists, Zuko is hot-tempered enough to challenge a man to an Agni Kai (a firebending duel) over the right to hunt the Avatar, but too merciful to deliver a finishing blast when he wins. Iroh is only along to help his nephew. The true bad guy of the season, Admiral Zhao (the man Zuko challenged) is more genuinely villainous – all ambition and self-destructive bad temper – but we meet equally unpleasant people in the "good guy" nations as well.
Meanwhile, the "good guy" Water tribes are macho, sexist cultures (the "civilized" Northern tribe to a degree that shocks even Sokka, and he's a Southern tribesman in full teenage macho-insecurity mode), while the Earth Kingdom has its share of Fire Nation collaborators – not to mention pirates and other folk who are unpleasant in their own right.
So what is it that makes the Fire Nation the bad guys? Well, the fact that those pleasant villages are colonies in the Earth Kingdom doesn't help. And we get a chilling hint of what those nice, friendly people have been brought up to believe when we see that the puppet show at the festival is about Firelord Ozai defending his people by incinerating an earthbender. It's not unlike the scene in Cabaret where the beautiful boys with their angelic voices are singing "The Future Belongs to Me" and it's all very moving and inspirational until you realize that they're Hitler Youth.
But it's only when we learn the story of that nasty burn scar over Zuko's left eye that we get a glimpse of the true rot at the heart of the Fire Nation: When he was thirteen, Zuko attended his first war meeting (Iroh let him in), and is horrified to hear his father's generals callously planning to throw away the lives of novice troops purely for the sake of drawing a stubborn group of earthbenders out into a vulnerable position. Zuko – speaking entirely out of turn – argues against it so vehemently that he ends up challenging one general to an Agni Kai. When the time of the duel rolls around, however, Zuko finds himself facing his own father. Apparently, Ozai felt that Zuko had shown him disrespect by speaking out of turn at the meeting. Zuko immediately starts begging for mercy and forgiveness; even if he was willing to fight his own father (and he's not), he couldn't win. Ozai proceeds to teach Zuko a lesson by burning his face and banishing him until he can return with the Avatar (as far as he knew at the time, never).
So, in sum, the Fire Nation are essentially good people who do terrible things to other, essentially good (but definitely flawed) people because they have bad-but-popular leaders who teach them to be afraid of those other good-but-flawed people. Hmm. That strikes a little close to home – as does the abused child who blames himself for the abuse, and who seeks desperately to earn the abusive parent's love. Kids could actually learn something real from this. Is that even legal?
F-Words 2009!
Elimination round voting for the 2009 Canadian F-Word Blog Awards is now open. Shakesville has been nominated once again in the Best Feminist Blog—International category; thanks very much to the people who nominated us and please make sure to stop by and vote! (If not for Shakesville, then for one of the other great blogs nominated there.)
One of our frequent guest-posters (including today!), Renee of Womanist Musings has been nominated in several categories, including in Best Feminist Blog—Oh! Canada! English, and there are lots of awesome nominees in all the categories, which you can access by clicking on the list at the top right of the page here.
So go vote!
And thanks to A Creative Revolution for all their hard work running these awards.
Sometimes Disability is a Shared Identity
by Shaker Renee, of Womanist Musings
Recently I went public with the fact that I have Fibromyalgia, Benign Essential Tremors and Sarcoidosis. When the weather is cold and damp I am pretty much trapped indoors. Even on warm days, I am not able to walk long distances, so shopping is something I rarely do anymore. Thankfully my unhusband has taken over most of these duties without any form of complaint.
He must now buy things for me that I have always taken care of for myself; this includes my tampons and underwear. I recently decided I needed new panties so I told him the brand and the size to get and off he went to Walmart to purchase them. (yes I know Walmart is evil but I live in a small town) As he stood there in the section trying to find what I asked him to get, the women started giving him dirty looks and moving as quickly as possible to get away from him. After finding what I wanted he continued his shopping and happened to run into one of the women he had seen in the underwear section who proceeded to glare at him like he was some kind of child molester. He had to loudly announce to her that he was not following her and was shopping for his sick wife.
Another time when I had decided to brave the pain and go out I was approached by a Walmart employee asking me if my unhusband had beaten me. On one hand I was thankful that someone thought to reach out to a woman that they thought might have been battered and on the other I was upset that such an identity could be attached to man that I love and respect because of an illness I have.
It is so easy when you live with chronic pain to only think about what you are going through. The pain can blind you to all else and leave a shell of your former self. There are times though when I look at my unhusband who has done all that he can to be supportive, patient and kind and realize that my illness has indeed attached itself to him as well.
Just as my life is restricted so is his. There are days he must be both father and mother to our children because I barely have the strength to roll over. As he cooks (much to the children's disdain), cleans, wipes bums and helps with home work all on little to no sleep, I cannot help but wonder how it is he manages to never be resentful. The kids are very quick to inform him of every single culinary slight that he makes and that includes forgetting the cinnamon on the French toast. We were an active family that loved to play more than anything else and now sitting at the table playing monopoly is a struggle for me.
We have attempted to find various ways to negotiate my illness so that as much as possible I can continue to participate in family activities but I would be lying if I said that it was even close to what we had or would have continued to have had I not gotten sick. 
As he patiently tries to talk me into getting a wheel chair so that we can take longer trips as a family, I must weigh my ridiculous sense of pride against spending time with my family doing the things that they want to do. I know that I am differently abled and yet other than the cane which I use walk there is often very little evidence of how ravaged my body is by my two chronic illnesses. I am resistant to sit in a wheelchair because I know I will no longer have the appearance of an able body. It is the last vestige of privilege that I am holding on to. I don’t want to be treated differently even though I am. I don’t want to be offered a seat, or told to rest. I want to be allowed to fight the pain on my own terms.
My oldest child is wise beyond his years and knows much more about illness than any child should. It has caused him to be incredibly empathetic but I cannot help but feel saddened that some of the innocence of his youth has been robbed by my two diseases. He still wakes with fear at the thought that I might die and leave him, even though I have explained countless times that people rarely die from the diseases I have. Even when I smile through my tears I know that in my heart he sees the pain that I cannot hide and on more than one occasion has tried in his own way to bring me relief. Sometimes he will sing Sweet Caroline to me because he knows that it is my favourite song, or he will simply come and cover me in kisses. From the moment of his birth he and I have always had a special connection. The love I feel for him really defies words.
This year he stopped believing in Santa. He did not find his presents early or decide that there was something wrong with the Santas in the mall. Unbeknownst to me, he had written Santa a letter asking that I be cured of my diseases. He copied the address off of the television that Canada Post shows in their commercials and was certain that he had found a way to make everything better for me. We spent much of Christmas morning crying as I had to tell him that I was indeed still sick. I will never forget the sorrow in his big brown eyes or the love he showed me that morning.
Having the family that I do makes it easier for me to deal with the day to day pain of having two chronic illnesses. I know above all else that in terms of love I hit the jackpot a million times over and it is this that pushes me to confront my own desire to hold on to privilege. Mayhem, Destruction and the Unhusband are everything to me and somehow knowing that I will never be the same is just easier to negotiate knowing that they will catch me when I fall and wait for me when I need to walk slowly. If we all had just a little bit more of the kind of love my men give me, the world would be a much happier place.
(Cross-posted.)
More Amazon Fuckery
In case this wasn't enough to put you off Amazon, now the online retailer is now "stripping the sales ranking indicators for what they deem to be 'adult' material," including LGBTQI material, erotica, and romance novels, and some very familiar feminist titles, too.
Adult Material, according to Amazon: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters by Jessica Valenti.
Not Adult Material, according to Amazon: Playboy: the Complete Centerfolds.
Needless to say, their "adult" material designations seem to have an interesting correlation with teh gay and ladybits. Shocking.
Quoth Amazon:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.But wait—what's this?
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove "adult" titles from its sales rankings. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a "glitch" had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new policy regarding "adult" titles. As of Monday morning, a number of titles affected by the glitch were still without sales rankings. No one at Amazon was available this morning to discuss when the problem might be fixed or what caused the glitch.Huh. So what we have here is a company that quietly instituted a new homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist policy over the Easter weekend, and is currently playing a waiting game to see if the backlash is small enough to be something they can weather with minimum damage while keeping their new policy in place, or if they will have to attribute the policy to a "glitch" and unwind it.
Make some noise here.Shaker Eloriane also notes: "[Y]ou can complain to Amazon directly. Their exec customer service email is ecr@amazon.com and their customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575."
[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]
Britain's Got Talent: Susan Boyle
Shades of Paul Potts, and then some. (Some people will never, ever learn not to judge a book by its cover, no matter how many times they're hit over the head.) There's a better quality (but not embeddable) version here.
[H/T to Shaker Leigh.]
ZOMG PRESIDENITAL POOCH NOOZ!!!
Hang on to your hats, Shakers: The pup has landed!
Supposedly. Or maybe not. But it's pretty certain. Or something. Who cares?! Wheeeee! Presidential pooch! ZOMG! Squeeeee!
*clunk*
Just last night, we had friends over and one of them asked, "Why is there so much attention dedicated to this dog?!" To which I replied, "Because it's the most important thing in the world."
Duh.
(Make sure you take the important WaPo poll at the link: "Do You Think Firstdogcharlie.com Is the Actual Dog the Obama Family Adopted?" They report; you decide!)
I Give Up
Entertainment Weekly, last seen informing us that the 25 Greatest Active Film Directors are all dudez, is back with a list of the 25 Funniest Women in Hollywood, a list from which I have gleaned two things:
1. Latinas and Asian women are not funny.
2. If you want to be named the funniest woman in Hollywood, your résumé should be chockablock with the most misogynist tripe being churned out of the woman-hating cesspool known as mainstream American cinema—and you should definitely star in a movie where you are raped in a scene played for laughs and, in another scene played for laughs, flashed, which is another sexual assault, and your resultant trauma also played for laughs, the hilarity of which you subsequently defend in interviews, in a manner indicating you haven't the most basic comprehension between consensual and nonconsensual sex acts:
It is the most traumatic event that's ever happened to her, which is funny 'cuz I always imagined that she's probably seen a bit of male anatomy and it wouldn't normally scare her. But I think she uses any opportunity she can to get attention, to draw attention to herself.Your Funniest Woman in Hollywood, Shakers.
I can't stop laughing.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison.
Drinks are on 2M4M ISO clue.
Noodly Goodness
I was just gifted with new jewelry:
No better way to add color to your spring wardrobe than with brilliantly colored mostaccioli.
So Here's the Thing...
Anyone who knows the first thing about property values, depreciation, neighborhood safety, and their inextricable association with widespread long-term vacancy, will be totally on board with squatter advocacy.
Everyone else is probably a conservative who knows shit about shit and sings the praises of bootstraps while insisting nobody ever gave them nuttin', before grousing about the "death tax" that diminished their inheritance in the next breath.
Just Curious
Do the right-wingers and people at Fox News who are organizing and promoting all these anti-tax "Tea Parties" around the country next week and exhorting people to "tea-bag" their Congressional representatives actually know that there's a whole other meaning to the term "tea-bagging"?
Rachel Maddow tries to explain.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Not That There's Anything Wrong With It...
This has not been a good month so far for the anti-gay brigades. First Iowa strikes down the anti-same-sex marriage law, then Vermont passes same-sex legislation. Then the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) launches an ad campaign that sets the bar for self-parody, and now they've announced a national campaign called "2 Million for Marriage" -- or 2M4M.
*snort*
For those of you who are not up on the acronyms used in gay chat rooms, M4M means "Man for Man," as in one man looking to meet up/hook up with another man.
So either there's someone in NOM who has not been outside of their cocoon since the advent of the internet, or there's someone inside the organization with a wicked sense of humor and playing these folks for the fools that they are. Either way, this is the best example of an unintentional double entendre in advertising since 1969 when Ford came out with the Rim Blow steering wheel.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
