Recently, I went to the eye doctor, because I've had the same pair of glasses for 10 years and am long overdue for an update to my prescription. I picked out new frames, which I can pick up tomorrow and are really different from what have been my signature specs for a decade. I'm sort of freaking out about losing the old ones, which is, let's face it, probably a whole other entry under the same What-the-Hell heading.
Anyway, while I was there, he gave me some contact lens samples to try out in case I want to get some new contact lenses, too—and they're the kind where you have to peel back the foil to get to the lens, and that damn foil is always on there so tight that when the seal finally pops, it tends to squirt out some of the saline solution in which the lenses are stored.
Yesterday, as I was peeling open one of the samples, I thought: "This is gonna squirt at me," right before I felt myself deliberately not turning my head to avoid it. Sure enough—squirt! Right in the eye.
And I realized that I do this a lot: Instead of turning my head when I'm breaking a seal or squeezing a lime or peeling an orange or some other activity that is likely to result in eye-squirtage, like most people do, scrunching up their faces and leaning away or turning their heads in anticipation of the squirt!, I feel compelled to look. Eyes wide. Even when I know I'm gonna get it. Especially then.
It's like how vertigo can be associated with the almost-irresistible urge to jump from dizzying heights. I can't not look. I have squirtigo!
In What the Hell Is Wrong With Me?
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud purveyors of the Limp-Minded, Lily-Livered Lefty Agenda.
Recommended Reading:
Renee: 8-Year-Old Victim Blamed for Her Own Gang Rape
Ginmar: Henry Louis Gates
Andy: Daniel Radcliffe: 'I Loathe Homophobia'
Scott: (What Does It Take for CNN to) Fire Lou Dobbs
PhDork: Way out of Bounds
Tracey: My Antifeminist Childhood: Gameboy, Talkboy, Walkman, & Discman Edition
And, if you can, Support Tami's Run! She's running for Congo Women.
Leave your links in comments...
Anti-Choice Legislation In Ohio
[Trigger warning.]
"Pro-life" douchenozzle John Adams (R-Mendacity) has re-introduced legislation in the Ohio house that would require the biological father's consent before a woman can get an abortion.
As written, the bill would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort.Lifenews.com reports "the bill offers exceptions in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is threatened by the pregnancy." They fail to note what that exception consists of: "[W]omen would be required to present a police report in order to prove a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest."
Or, as Pam puts it "a rape survivor would need to find her rapist and see if he's willing to sign off on the whole deal. Jesus H. Christ." Allow me to add an oh, for fuck's sake while we're at it.
Claiming to not know the father's identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation. Simply put: no father means no abortion.This whole tack seems especially mendacious and nefarious, as the baby-saver movement tries to find a new position to attack choice from, this time hiding its anti-choice fuckneckery inside a thicket of seemingly-pro-choice legislation. The problem is it is entirely pro-male-choice: Women are, as always, left at the mercy of the patriarchy for autonomy over their own bodies.
In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort.
Of course, there wouldn't be an issue at all if women would just keep their legs closed. "There is merit to chastity," according to Adams. Not sure how that applies to rapists though.
[H/T to Shakers SamanthaB and Koach]
Family Valuez
Meet Tennessee state senator Paul Stanley:
He's a solid conservative Republican and married father of two, who according to his website is "a member of Christ United Methodist Church, where he serves as a Sunday school teacher and board member of their day school."You already know where this is going, don't you?
Stanley recently sponsored a bill designed to prevent gay couples from adopting children. And when a Planned Parenthood official recently sought his support for family planning services for Memphis teens, Stanley told her, according to the official, that he "didn't believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway, that his faith and church are important to him, and he wants to promote abstinence."
In a sworn affidavit, a Tennessee state investigator has said that Stanley admitted to having a "sexual relationship" with a 22-year-old female intern working in his office, and to taking nude pictures of her in "provocative poses" in his apartment.That's something I wouldn't care about at all, if only State Senator Stanley had the same generosity toward same-sex couples and women who want control over their own reproduction.
Maybe someday the GOP will learn that people's business is their own business.
That'd be cool.
Quote of the Day
"Let me say to the American public: If you hear somebody saying, we can't afford healthcare reform, because...if they use any of these words: 'socialization,' or 'government control of your healthcare decisions,' or if they mention 'England,' 'France,' or 'Canada,' you can be assured that they are not telling you the truth. They are trying to scare you away from a plan that can make a real difference, not just in American families, but in the American economy as a whole."—Elizabeth Edwards speaking with Rachel Maddow on the veracity of the arguments made by opponents of health care reform.
Feel the Homomentum!
Hi Shakers! GoldFishy here with some great news from Minnesota! (Thanks to Liss for the chance to contribute.)
Saint Paul, MN City Council and Mayor Chris Coleman (no relation to former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman, who also once held the very same office) have unanimously supported and authorized a municipal domestic partner registry for that municipality. Woot! What really rocks my socks is that the mayor commented at the signing (held at a local gay bar!!!) that the measure is "not enough." It offers little to participating citizens beyond a public recognition of the domestic partnership of any two committed adults (same-sex couples or otherwise), as state law prohibits any local, state, or county government or agency from offering insurance and other benefits to same-sex, unmarried partners. But our friends in Minneapolis and Duluth have similar ordinances. This does feel like a good way to build community-level support for equality through neighbors, businesses, and local governments who see a chance to strengthen families.
What really grabs me in this article is the celebration that is taking place despite the limited civil impact of the ordinance.
"Anything that can help show we have this commitment of love together and in our daily lives, I think, is important," said Jane Leonard, 52, of St. Paul, who has been with her partner 27 years. "It's a moment where we (as a city) say, 'OK, we all agreed to commit to this. We'll see where that takes us.' "We in MN have real political challenges with marriage equality (remember, US Representative Michele Bachmann was once a state legislator here, and we are home to Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is widely recognized as a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2012—both of whom have been tireless, vocal opponents to LGBTQI equality in nearly every form). We've somehow managed to NOT allow a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage come to a vote on the floor of the legislature, but Bachmann and her ilk did all that they could to get it there. And we have had a DOMA on the books in our state since 1997, but we've also been trailblazers in many ways (including early adoption of statewide protections against discrimination for transgender individuals in 1993).
The ordinance is repeatedly referred to as a "steppingstone" by those at the signing ceremony/Big Gay Happy Hour. This is because the people of Saint Paul, like many people here, expect more. Rightly so. And this has to be a good sign:
During a public hearing on the measure last week, not a single person spoke against it.Do you feel it? That there is Homomentum!
Roethlisberger Case
[Trigger warning.]
As most of you probably know, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of sexual assault in a lawsuit by a former employee of a hotel in Lake Tahoe at which he was staying during a celebrity golf tournament. You may also know that ESPN put out a do not report memo about the case—and the victim-blaming is in full-force just about everywhere.
I don't want to write a whole lot about this case right now, though I will say this: One doesn't need proof of the veracity of the allegation in order to call bullshit on the media coverage and rape apology tropes being wheeled out on rickety old carts yet again.
Point-blank: I have no idea whether Ben Roethlisberger raped the woman who alleges he did. Even knowing everything I know about the association between privilege and entitlement sexual aggression and professional athletics, even knowing everything I know about the rarity of false reports (more infrequent than false reports of car theft, which itself is rare), and even knowing the statistics on the ubiquity of sexual assault, I still don't know whether Ben Roethlisberger raped the woman who alleges he did.
And that truth has fuck-all to do with my saying that statements like this one from Roethlisberger's attorney, David Cornwell—"The timing of the lawsuit and the absence of a criminal complaint and a criminal investigation are the most compelling evidence of the absence of any criminal conduct"—are total bullshit. Because even if this woman isn't being truthful, the absence of a criminal complaint has fuck-all to do with the absence of criminal conduct in general, and it's a deeply cynical thing to say when most intellectually honest people, even ones with clients accused of rape, will acquiesce that lots and lots of women (and men) don't report being sexually assaulted.
Roethlisberger guilt or innocence is a wholly separate, and frankly incidental, thing from a discussion of how a denial of his culpability is reliant on existent victim-blaming narratives, dependent on the rape culture even as it reinforces it.
Recommended Reading: Samhita, Yes Means Yes Blog, Colleen, and Sady.
Today in Fat-Hatin'
Shakers Azzy and roro80 both sent me a report (pdf) published in June that found: "More than 40% of physicians had a negative reaction toward obese patients."
Says Azzy (who I quote with permission): "Wow! 40+% of doctors react negatively to obese patients. Ya don't say!! I guess that explains why my doctor kept diagnosing me as 'fat.' 'Fat.' 'Depressed.' I'm depressed? But. Other than physical illness, I'm happy. How can I be depressed? 'Because you're fat. Duh!' Oh. Except I actually had cancer. Of the thyroid. Which had metastasized to my lymphatic system. OOPS!!"
Yeah.
And Shaker Jean forwarded this article from The Onion's AV Club which shockingly posits that all the "plus-sized" reality TV we're getting these days doesn't have anything to do with increased positivity toward (or even tolerance of) fatty-boom-balatties, but is in fact (hold onto your seats!) because Americans enjoy watching fat people be humiliated.
Apatowcalypse Now: Methinks the Dudebro Doth Protest Too Much
Because she hates me (just kidding), Shaker Nancy sent me a link to a Jezebel post which links to a piece at Moveline in which Judd Apatow explains that he's not a sexist.
Maybe he's funny after all, because THAT MAKES ME LAUGH!
"I think, really, what a lot of these issues are is that women are romanticized in movies," he said. "[My] movies go pretty hard at having women have as many problems as men. They make mistakes that are as big as men's. So when someone says Knocked Up seems sexist, I'm like, 'Really?' I mean, Seth [Rogen] has an earthquake, and he grabs his bong before his pregnant girlfriend. That's pretty bad. But I try to weigh it evenly so it's not really about men or women; it's just about miscommunications and us at our worst. Because people at their best I don't really want to watch in entertainment. I don't really want to watch mature people or smart people or people who do the right thing. I like to meet them in life, but I don't find them entertaining. And certainly not funny. So I feel like the worse people are, the more amusing [it is] and the more I root for them to figure their shit out."Possibly even worse than the "You're just humorless" criticism-deflection is the "You just hate how equally I treat women" accusation, as if the critics of Apatow's treatment of women (and/or men) are really, secretly just mad because his portrayal of women is so real and WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! We can only tolerate women being portrayed as flawless saints, or something.
I've met this strawfeminist before. She likes to hang around lots of dudebros who engage in lazy sexist tropes about both sexes and call it keeping it real or edgy.
Something that Judd Apatow does not realize: The "problems" with which female characters are burdened can themselves be sexist. If, for example, you give your male lead the "problem" of preferring his bong to his girlfriend, and give your female lead the "problem" of being in a relationship with a man who chooses his bong over her, instead of, say, the "problem" of extricating herself from a relationship with someone she loves but who clearly does not sufficiently return her feelings, that is stupid—and it's stupid in a way that's sexist, because it turns the female lead into someone who centers and prioritizes the male lead, which is frequently the only thing she seems to have in common with him.
Giving a female character "problems" doesn't count if they're nothing but appendage problems—that is, being an appendage of a male character. If a female character would no longer have any of the flaws with which she's been imbued if she dumped the male character to whom she's inexplicably attached, that's not parity. Especially when she's also the magical solution to all the male character's flaws: If only he'd grow up and appreciate this good woman!
She's better off without him; he's a better and complete man with her. So they end up together! Yay!
Wait. Yay?
Something doesn't quite seem to work in that equation.
Oh, well, never mind that niggling feeling in the back of your mind about how we've been shown in myriad and sundry ways throughout the entirety of the film that the female character's biggest "problem" is being in a relationship with an immature dipshit who alternately takes her for granted, wants her to be his mommy, and resents her for having needs of her own, which sort of undermines the idea that their being together—forever!—is a happy ending for her.
What are you—some kind of humorless feminist who doesn't like seeing men and women being treated equally? Snort.
Things get rougher for female characters in films Apatow merely produces to advance the careers of the soldiers in his Man-Boy Army. The Seth Rogen-penned Superbad is little more than an extended treatise on the awesomeness of date rape (and shares in common with the Seth Rogen vehicle Observe and Report the hilarious twist that drunk sluts want you to fuck them!), and the Jason Segel-penned Forgetting Sarah Marshall contains within it the most egregious example of an Appendage Girl (played by poor Mila Kunis, who deserves so much better) I believe I've ever witnessed on film.
Sady's description of Appendage Girl (who she calls "Some Lady," because she doesn't even need a name, given the purpose she serves) is exquisite:
Some Lady gives Peter a free room because she pities him. Some Lady goes on dates with Peter because she pities him. Some Lady becomes Peter's girlfriend because, basically, she pities him, and Some Lady consistently just says what Peter wants her to say and does what Peter wants her to do and it is so blatant and ridiculous that I seriously considered the possibility that he was hallucinating her because he had gone 100% around the bend, like the point of the movie would turn out to be that Mila Kunis was Tyler Durden.Appendage Girl/Some Lady's only "problem" appears to be having a picture of her boobs publicly displayed in a men's bathroom—which, let's face it, isn't her problem as much as a problem for Peter: The Dude To Whom She's An Appendage, because THOSE ARE HIS BOOBS!
…Her eyes are fathomless pools of tolerance. She signals red-hot, uninhibited tolerance with every move she makes. She wants to take him home and tolerate the hell out of him. This makes her a Good Woman, as opposed to Sarah Marshall, who is a Bad Woman, as we are shown in a flashback wherein he plays some of this masterwork for her, and, you will not believe it, she thinks a vampire puppet musical about Dracula is a dumb idea.
Some Lady also does this really terrible thing which I have to tell you about, which is to laugh really, really loudly whenever Jason Segel does something we are supposed to find funny or charming, which is especially bizarre and annoying when the jokes fall flat, as they do with greater and greater frequency once the movie hits its stride. Like, there is this scene wherein she "surprises" him with the chance to perform his music in public, because fuck knows she doesn't have anything better to do than to give the guy she has dated 0.5 times the chance to serenade a bunch of harmless drunks with his as-yet-untested musical vampire puppet bullshit, and he performs the worst fucking song you have ever heard, I think it is supposed to be funny but really it is just Jason Segel singing a terrible song in a terrible stupid Dracula voice, and she laughs like FIVE TIMES during this scene, and then afterwards says, literally says the words, "that is funny."
This woman is a plot device who exists specifically and entirely to show us that we are supposed to like Jason Segel's character, and 99% of her narrative function could be performed by having cards pop up periodically on screen as in silent movies, like "A Clever Jest!" or "What a Likable Young Fellow!" They could have just had a big neon sign hanging over the screen that periodically flashed the words LAUGHTER or APPLAUSE, and then there would be no reason for Mila Kunis to be in this movie.
Don't worry, sensitive readers. He takes care of it.
And that's when we find out that Appendage Girl only really had a problem so that her dudebro in shining armor could fix it. Which is really great, because, dude, he really needed to feel like a hero. Lucky she had that problem he could fix. To make himself feel awesome.
This, by the way, is a film that would never work—no less have been a huge success—if the genders of its main characters had been reversed, if it had been "Forgetting Stan Marshall," a comedic romp about Polly Bretter, who, in the midst of crazily pursuing her ex across the country, serendipitously meets a nice young gentleman who not only finds her revenge stalking charming enough to help out, but finds endearing every objectively unpleasant foible that caused her ex to leave. People watching "Forgetting Stan Marshall" would ask: Why does that guy like her? And when the film replied, "Duh, because she's AWESOME," as she connived to get her ex back in bed only to sexually humiliate him, those people would say: "What?"
And possibly: "I strongly disagree."
Apatow finds it "amusing" and "entertaining" that the people in his films are totally fucked up. And maybe if I were a dudebro, I'd share his opinion. But, as it happens, I'm a woman with Actual Real ProblemsTM, some of which have something to do with the privilege that allows men to ignore the breadth of womanhood. And, more pointedly, to hold in contempt those parts of it that aren't of some use to men. So I just can't find the funny in his funhouse mirror version of parity.
And I'm not sure he really understands the meaning of the word sexism.
Perhaps Katherine Heigl can explain it to him.
[Previously in the Apatowcalypse: Man-Child-Rising, Rise of the Dudebros, Dawn of the Dudebros, Lord of the Dudebros, When Dudebros Collide.]
Daily Kitteh
This is Feather trying to make sense of the Elizabethan Collar that's surrounding her head, after having a couple of mast cell tumors removed. When she got home she was extremely happy, except for the damn collar that makes her bump into everything. :)
What The Hell?
Shaker InfamousQBert, left, with mum
What the hell is that ginormous black thing around your mum's throat? What the hell was your dress made out of, a slaughtered couch?? What the hell is with those (again!) giant-ass glasses??? What the hell????
(If you've a ridiculous and/or embarrassing photo of yourself from your youth, please send it to shakerwhatthehell_at_yahoo_dot_com. I'll post them up as part of our series called What The Hell? so everyone can laugh at with you.)
[See also: Deeky, Liss, evilsciencechick, katecontinued, ClumsyKisses, Mistress Sparkletoes, Liiiz, Reedme, Mama Shakes, Mustang Bobby, RedSonja, MomTFH, Portly Dyke, SteffaB, Icca, Christina, Orangelion03, Car, and Siobhan.]
Question of the Day
Do you have any phobias, or serious fears?
I have but two words for you: The dentist.
I'm pretty much not afraid of anything else, no other common phobias. I'm good with heights, small spaces, flying, insects, rodents, reptiles... I pretty much just fear the dentist, after a childhood experience so horrible that I will not recount it, lest I turn every soul reading these words into an equally avowed anti-dentite, lol.
In Things That Are Totally Not Racist
Forwarding around pictures of our president's head grafted onto the body of a tribal witch doctor. Totally not racist. Just some conservatives' completely legitimate commentary on healthcare reform.
What are you—humorless or something?
Once Upon a Time...
...I worked with a guy we'll call Tim.
Tim was the sort of fella who was under the misapprehension that he was successfully disguising behind an intolerable mask of belligerent bravado his deep and insecurities, born of an equally fervent and intractable desire to live up to the expectations of men demanded by an unforgiving patriarchy. He walked with a puffed chest. He talked incessantly about how "hot" his wife was. He bragged about the speed of his car, the make of his watch, the cost of his home. And he told jokes.
He told racist jokes—the kind he had convinced himself weren't racist because they weren't about blacks and Latin@s, but were the new millennium racist jokes about call centers in India. And he told douchy jokes about queers and the disabled, the kind that he would actually tell to queer people and disabled people, as if it would somehow endear him to them, as if they wouldn't notice that he was a straight, cis, able-bodied white guy whose privilege let him believe and assert, quite wrongly, that he'd never get offended if any one of them told him a good Irish joke.
Because he had a sense of humor.
Tim, he of the great sense of humor, told all kinds of jokes that revealed the epidemic deficiency of humor among his coworkers (who always seemed to have a good laugh when he wasn't around).
But sexist jokes were really his forte.
When Tim first came to work at the creative firm, the only vacant desk in the studio was directly opposite me. We were in entirely different departments, so it was a temporary spot while things were moved around to accommodate him where he needed to be, with the rest of his team. Temporary was long enough.
It was two days before I first had to snap my fingers next to my eyeline and say, "Eyes up here, Tim," because he was talking into my cleavage.
It was four before he asked me, "Are you one of those feminists?" To which I responded, "Yes, I am," with a level stare that I meant as a challenge and he received as such. He looked away.
Nonetheless—or perhaps because of the fact of my feminism—he told me sexist jokes. Sometimes the fool genuinely believed that he was going to butter me up, or maybe loosen me up, with his sexist humor. Sometimes he was darker than that, and he was piquing me. It was an evident struggle within him—he couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted to love me or hate me, whether he wanted me to love him or hate him.
I told him off. He told more jokes.
This was not my only problem with Tim, whose temporary residence in my vicinity had ended, but did not diminish his determination that we would be friends, or enemies, and our friendship, or rivalry, forged in the fires of sexist humor. He became insistent on knowing things about me; I began to suspect he was reading my email when he was in the office after hours. Emails I hadn't read were not bold as if unread. I found beer bottles in the trash can under my desk. And then one day I found his wallet on my shelf, where he had apparently left it the night before while tucked in for an evening of reading my email.
All the while, there were the jokes.
The morning I found his wallet, I called his extension. He didn't pick up. I walked over to his desk; he was "on the phone," but I could see that there wasn't an outside line lit on the phone. I told him I needed to see him. He avoided me for hours. Every time he had to pass my desk, I said, with a wry grin: "Tim, I need to talk to you." Sure, sure—as soon as I've got a minute. Just so busy today. As his wallet burned a hole in my desktop.
Suddenly the jolly jokester who couldn't get enough of me, had hours to hang around bothering me every day, had not a spare moment to speak with me.
Finally, toward the end of the day, he stopped at my desk. He needed his wallet, after all. "What did you need to talk to me about?" he asked, feigning being harried.
"This," I told him. I plopped the wallet down between us. He looked as if he was about to make an excuse, or maybe give me an oh-thanks-I-was-looking-for-that-heh-heh sort of bullshit response. I stopped him, to spare us both the embarrassment. "Don't say a word. Just listen. Unless you want me to have you fired, you will never read my email again. Ever. You will never bother me when I'm trying to work again. Ever. And you will never, ever, tell another one of your goddamn jokes to me again. Do we understand each other?"
His face changed, darkened. Suddenly the sneer that had been lurking underneath the joking demeanor all along was front and center. He clenched his teeth and snatched his wallet from my desk like Golum going after the one ring. And then, wordlessly, he scurried away.
Later, on a night when both of us were in the office late, his breath smelling of beer, he would tell me that his mind hadn't been changed; he still held the same views. If he realized he was confessing to the biases he swore he didn't hold, he gave no indication. "You didn't teach me anything except not to say this stuff around you," he spit at me, swaying, his hip barely steadying him against my desk.
I asked him if he'd ever been asked the same by anyone else, if there was anyone around whom he wouldn't talk his incessant, bigoted shit.
"No!" he proclaimed, rather proudly.
"Then I taught you there's at least one place in the world where your bigotry isn't tolerated, didn't I?"
He looked at me evenly, and I saw his face crumble, almost to sadness. For a moment, I thought he would say something, maybe even something uncharacteristically insightful, or regretful, but then the moment passed. Instead he peeled himself away from my desk and stumbled down the hall back to his cubicle, where his beer waited for him in his tiny fiefdom, where no one made him feel bad for telling his jokes.
If It's Tuesday Thursday, It's Boehlert!
Boehlert sinks his metaphorical teeth into a subject I've mentioned several times lately: Conservative media "transmitters," who mainstream extremist ideas. He looks at Lou Dobbs and the Birthers, specifically.
And Media Matters has put together an associated video, too:
Read. Watch. Discuss.
