"I call myself a feminist. Isn't that what you call someone who fights for women's rights?"—The Dalai Lama, during his closing remarks at the International Freedom Award ceremony in Memphis on Wednesday.
Iran Busted Building Secret "Pilot Plant"
So we have another round of "Do as I say, not as I do" from the Big Dogs.
Appearing before reporters in Pittsburgh [at the G-20 economic summit], President Obama said that the Iranian nuclear program [which has been hidden from international weapons inspectors for years] "represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime." President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, appearing beside Mr. Obama, said that Iran had deadline of two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions.Also see: WaPo; CNN.
"The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community," Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, standing on the other side of Mr. Obama. "The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand."
The extraordinary and hastily arranged joint appearance by the three leaders — and Mr. Obama said that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had asked him to convey that she stood with them as well — adds urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambition to build a nuclear weapons capacity. The three men demanded that Iran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran.
American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a "pilot plant" under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.
In a statement from its headquarters in Vienna on Friday, the atomic agency confirmed that it had been told Monday by Iran that "a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country." The agency said it had requested more information about the plant and access to it as soon as possible. "The agency also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility," said the statement said.
Don't get me wrong: I don't want Iran having any nukes for multiple reasons, but mostly because I don't want anyone having any nukes. But I remain consistently amazed that the leadership of countries with nuclear weaponry expect other countries to be okay with that power imbalance. International arms negotiations are mystifying to me, and I'm sure there are a lot of people with defense hard-ons [NSFW-ish] who will happily tell me I just don't understand, to which I can only reply, "Good."
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strips 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. In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.
Question of the Day
You know what I used to love? Snapple Elements. That was an energy drink that was out about ten years ago, came in a snazzy little bottle (see above). They had one that was "Agave" flavoured, or so the label claimed, but it was probably closer in flavour to Cactus Cooler** than the succulent. It was my favourite.
They'll forever be linked in my mind to a shitty job I had at the start of this decade and the long commute home every night. I'd pick one on up (usually late at night) as I'd stop at the filling station. I loved the stuff. I am sure it was very, very bad for me.
Sadly, they don't make this stuff any longer.
So, what discontinued product do you miss?
** Cactus Cooler is still available, just not in my region. Damn you, Cola Cartel!
Quote of the Day
"For [two months after I came out] my parents tried to convince me that I couldn't know what I was. But I knew I was different in second grade—I just didn't really put a name to it until I was 11. My parents said, 'How do you know what your sexuality is if you haven't had any sexual experiences?' I was like, 'Should I go and have one and then report back?'"—Austin, a 15-year-old gay young man from a small town in Michigan, who was interviewed for Benoit Denizet-Lewis' "Coming Out in Middle School" for the New York Times.
Nice Try!
I was just on the phone with Spudsy as he was leaving work and in the middle of our conversation he started laughing: "Someone threw a banana under my car!"
"It was Kirk Cameron!" I exclaimed, prompting him to burst into hysterical laughter.
Spudsy: "Omigod, it totally was Kirk Cameron! He wants my car to slip on a banana!"
Liss: "Take that, evolutionist heathen!" *makes honking clown noise*
We both laugh hysterically.
Spudsy: "You'd better post this. Byeeeee!"
On "Real" Christians and Christian Privilege
Frequently, when I write about religion, of my lack thereof, I get requests to distinguish between "real" Christians (those Christians who centralize personal beliefs of love and service, and are generally more progressive) and "Christianists," or some variation thereof (those Christians who centralize cultural beliefs of evangelism and control and seek to impose/legislate their beliefs, and are generally more conservative). Often, Christians in my life identify themselves to me as "real" Christians by approximately this measure. Occasionally, a reader will even request that I stop identifying certain people as Christians.
In March 2007, a reader left the comment: "Would you folks please stop putting the word 'Christian' in front of the name 'Ann Coulter' as an adjective? Those of us who actually do practice our religion would appreciate it."
My answer was no, I wouldn't stop. And my answer about distinguishing between "real" and "unreal" Christians, beyond noting that there are Christians who try to impose their beliefs on others and those who don't, is also no.
Contrary to what some might believe, it's not because I'm trying to be a belligerent shit. It's because I don't want the responsibility of deciding who's Christian and who isn't—and I can't imagine why any Christian would want to give that responsibility to an atheist in the first place. Yes, I have personal opinions about how closely self-identified Christians of all stripes hew to their own religious text, but it's flatly not my place to kick someone out of the Christian community, even semantically.
And, truth be told, even if I did feel like it were my place, I wouldn't stop identifying as Christians people like, for example, Ann Coulter, anyway—because Christianity is about culture as much as it is scripture no matter on what part of the Christian spectrum one falls.
Coulter describes herself as a Christian and is regarded as a Christian by a sizable portion of the American Christian community. She's invited to speak at Christian conferences. She appears on the same stages as elected GOP members of Congress who are running for president and have made their Christianity a central part of their campaign. She is provided cover for her outrageous commentary and hostility toward feminists, the LGBTQI community, POC, liberals, etc., by Christians and Christian organizations specifically because she calls herself a Christian and so do they.
Coulter, and Christians like her, are part of a specific Christian community. It's not the same, not remotely the same, as many Shakers' Christian communities, or my parents', or lots of other people's, but that doesn't mean that it's not Christian.
Christianity has a 2,000-year history that has seen countless iterations of the religion based on countless interpretation of the text and shaped to fit countless times and spaces and needs in disparate cultures all around the world. Christians have done great things, and not-so-great things—and anyone who makes the personal choice to carry the Christian mantle associates themselves with a history that includes all the good stuff and all the shitty stuff, too. One can't say, "I only associate with the good Christianity—not the inquisitions and the genocides and the warmongering and the colonialism and the institutional misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, anti-Semitism…"
That's all part of Christianity's legacy, too—and it just isn't intellectually honest to say, "Well, those weren't real Christians." Yes, they were. And so are the Christians who do shitty stuff today.
They might not be the same kind of Christian as you are, but they are nonetheless Christians.
Christianity, at least (and especially) in America, is a privilege—and, like any privilege, it can be uncomfortable to face the ugly reality of what other members of a privileged class can do to non-privileged folks, even if you don't do it yourself. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm cisgender: I understand the impulse to distance oneself. But as a white person, I am obliged to acknowledge that the history of white supremacy in America is one of slavery, of lynchings, of segregation, of sundown towns, of internment camps, of genocide, and of all manner of institutionalized racism. I don't get to say (nor do I want to) that the KKK aren't "real" white people.
They sure as hell are.
That Christianity is a chosen privilege does not mean its members can claim a lower standard of rigorous self-examination. And it doesn't mean that less privileged Christians, i.e. progressive Christians, can claim a lower standard, either, just because the more privileged Christians marginalize them. Poor whites don't get to disclaim their white privilege just because they are further marginalized by their lack of wealth.
In fact, chosen privileges demand, if anything, a higher standard of self-examination, because one has a choice whether to participate in the privilege. But so often, the fact that Christianity is a choice is instead used to deny the effects of that privilege altogether—"I'm not one of those Christians; I'm one of the good ones!"
All the benefits of the privilege that saying "I'm a Christian" confers; none of the responsibility for the effects of Christian supremacy.
I am a part of the feminist community, a portion of which is institutionally transphobic. (As but one example of embedded bigotry.) Not just transphobic in the way any individual can have internalized transphobia, but subscribing to delineated and codified anti-trans feminist theory. We share the label, but not the belief—and that frustrates the hell out of me.
But I don't handle it by saying, "Those aren't real feminists," and leaving it at that and hoping all the trans readers at Shakesville will oblige my assertion of superiority to transphobic feminists. I have made an ongoing examination of my cis privilege a central part of my feminism. (Which is not to say I never fuck-up; in fact, fucking up is an integral part of my learning process, unfortunately for the people I hurt in the process.) I don't choose to ignore that feminism, a community of which I am a part by choice, runs a spectrum and has a history that includes ugly things.
What asking to be granted a disassociation from Christianity's spectrum and history that includes ugly things does on a practical level is expect marginalized people to pretend that none of the bad things that have been done to them in the name of Christianity have anything to do with actual Christians.
In my own experience, that doesn't just mean regularly having to watch people who call themselves Christians argue that my body should not be my own, that my marriage isn't "real" because it wasn't formed in a church, that my LGBTQI loved ones are not deserving of equality, that I and my fellow progressives are traitors to our nation, that I couldn't possibly be moral because I am an atheist, and on and on and on.
It has also meant being targeted by a man calling himself a Christian, being wantonly smeared nationally by people calling themselves Christians, receiving rape and death threats by people calling themselves Christians, having people calling themselves Christians come to my door and dump garbage on my lawn, and eventually being left with no job and no income, all because of people calling themselves Christians.
The "they're not real Christians" refrain rather quickly loses its strength as a consolation to someone barraged by hatred from people calling themselves Christians. Even the liberal Christians I know had a harder time choking out that line after watching Donohue et. al. exact their "not real" Christian terror campaign upon me, because it sounds so hollow when you're telling someone with an inbox full of prayers they'll burn in hell as soon as they die (and hopefully soon).
Frankly, it's hurtful to me when Christians address what happened to me by saying, "Those aren't real Christians," expecting me to salve their discomfort about the baggage of privilege by not disagreeing. People who would never in a million years think to try to console a victim of a hate crime with "All [white/straight/cis/abled] people aren't like that!" nonetheless responded that way to me when I was targeted and threatened by droves of self-identified Christians.
I already know that all Christians aren't like that—and everyone who said it to me knew I was well aware of that fact. But in the wake of large members of a certain segment of Christianity attacking me, most of the Christians I knew felt obliged first and foremost to distance themselves from the group that hurt me, and do it in a way that protected their idea of Christianity, that reasserted their privilege—a privilege that is shared by the very people who attacked me, solely by virtue of their calling themselves Christians.
And they expected me to be comforted by it.
I understand, really I do, why liberal Christians want to think of this as somehow "different" from other issues of privilege. I understand why they don't want to be associated with people with whom they share a label but little else. (See again: A feminist community with institutionalized bigotry.) But requesting this exception, asking to receive the benefits of Christian privilege while accepting none of the responsibility of Christian supremacy, is not only unfair; it's flatly not progressive, because it ultimately serves to more deeply entrench Christian supremacy and privilege.
Asking me to make distinctions about "real" Christians is asking me to participate in my own marginalization. That is a request I cannot accommodate.
Census Worker Hanged; The Word "Fed" Written on His Chest
[Trigger warning.]
I think the thing that scares me more than anything else lately is Dave Neiwert's accuracy. I'll be very interested to read what he'll say about this:
The AP is reporting that Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found hanged to death in Kentucky with the word “fed” was scrawled on the dead man’s chest. Investigators are still trying to determine the motive, but “law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is ‘an apparent homicide.’” “Our job is to determine if there was foul play involved — and that’s part of the investigation — and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a census worker,” said FBI spokesman David Beyer.I wonder if people like Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck who have been busily spreading lies and paranoia about the Census (and Census takers) will feel the slightest twinge of guilt?
I'm guessing not. Just to give you an idea of how seriously wingnuts will take this, enjoy the "humor" of this blogger, as linked by Sadly, No (links there, if you must visit):
Confederate Yankee, ConfederateYankee.comHa ha.
Census Worker Found Hanged in KY
The state, not the lube.
We don't know the motive, or why this man was killed. It's possible that it had nothing to do with his job. Of course, if he was killed because he was a federal census worker, will someone please start taking some fucking responsibility in the goddamn media? Will someone please start holding these people accountable for inciting violence? Can we at least start having an ongoing dialogue about this, and show some fucking courage and call people out on the air?
I'm very, very interested to hear the results of this investigation. I am livid.
My deepest sympathies to Mr. Sparkman's family.
I Have to Be Transphobic to Protect Myself!
Gay bar has new ID rule for cross-dressers:
A gay bar in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village says cross-dressers who wish to drink there will now have to show a valid photo ID that matches the gender they are dressed as.Ya think?
Manager Peter Lansdorf says Hunters Nightclub reluctantly imposed its new ID requirement because cross-dressing prostitutes were advertising on Craigslist and mentioning his tavern as a place they hung out.
Lansdorf concedes that the new rule could cut into the club's substantial transvestite clientele, but says prostitution of any form could cost him his liquor license.
Spokesman Ed Yohnka of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois says the new ID requirement may possibly be a violation of the Illinois Human Rights Act.
Now, here's the thing: I've actually been to Hunter's, and it's a huge place, with a big indoor area with multiple spaces and a big outdoor area (open and accessible when the weather permits, which is about half the year). If Lansdorf is genuinely worried about prostitution going on at Hunter's, he needs to hire more staff to cover the club's expansive footprint. Because, first of all, what we're really talking about isn't just solicitation, but sex acts occurring on the premises, which occasionally happens, paid or otherwise. And, secondly, that ain't limited to trans patrons, some of whom might be the only ones advertising their presence at Hunter's, but almost certainly aren't the only ones tricking there.
(Note again: Some of whom. Barring all trans patrons because one or two may be engaging in criminal activity is just absurd, apart from everything else.)
But Lansdorf isn't, I suspect, genuinely worried about prostitution; I suspect he's genuinely worried about some ads in Craigslist having caught the attention of the media and/or the cops, and he wants to look like he's doing something to fix the problem—because an undercover bust at Hunter's is going to lose him a lot more clientele than turning away trans patrons is. So he's throwing his trans patrons under the bus.
And what he needs to do instead is work with ACLU Illinois to figure out a solution that isn't hostile to trans people, and, in the process, explore why it is that a gay club needs to be worried about ads on Craigslist when straight clubs advertised as meet-up places by straight female sex workers don't.
[H/T to Shaker TheDeviantE.]
It's Kirk in MA
Governor Deval Patrick today named Paul G. Kirk Jr. to serve as interim US senator, making the announcement in the presence of the immediate family of the late Edward M. Kennedy.
"He is a distinguished lawyer, volunteer, and citizen, and he shares the sense of service that so distinguished Senator Ted Kennedy," Patrick said at a press conference at the State House. "Paul will not seek the open seat in the special election coming up in January. But for the next few months, he will carry on the work and the focus of Senator Kennedy, mindful of his mission, and his values, and his love of Massachusetts."
The late senator's widow, Vicki Kennedy, and his son Ted Kennedy Jr. watched from the audience as Patrick introduced his selection.
"This appointment is a profound honor," Kirk said. "I accept it with sincere humility."
Kirk, a longtime Kennedy family friend, reiterated that he would not run in the special election and said he planned to keep the late senator's staff.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strips 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. In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.
Open Thread
Hosted by a bong-smoking dolphin tattoo.
Sorry about the slow morning, Shakers. I was up all night with a terrible case of indigestion (which probably wasn't helped by the fact that I watched Red Eye Fox's conservative answer to The Daily Show in the middle of the night; OMG worst. show. evah!). So, while I get my shit together, here's an open thread...
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
One of the better "Happy Days" spin-offs, which isn't saying much.
Top Chef Open Thread
Chef Tom Colicchio will drink. your. milkshake!!!
He will also, if you are interested and consenting, show you the proper way to squeeze melons. Or grapes.
Question of the Day
When is the last time you cried?
As everyone knows, I'm the Blubmaster 6000 and sadblub/joyblub 87 times a week, so my answering this question is almost stupid. But the answer is: Earlier today, when I read the first two stories linked in this post.
Quote of the Day
So in the end this is something that has to come with a, if there’s a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together, living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone. That is, this is one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation. They want access to public funds and resources. Eventually all those resources will be pooled because that’s the direction we’re going. And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis. - Rep. Steve King (R-IA) speaking out against same-sex marriage in Iowa.
Your Truth Is Merely Truthiness, Friend
Although the new Banana Boys video is amusing in its ham-fistedness, I want to be serious for just a moment about its inclusion of one my particular bailiwicks—the claim that god-belief/religion/god(s) is the singular genesis of morality.
Sayeth Kirk Cameron: "Only God can take the sinful heart of a man or a woman and cause them to love that which is right and just and good."
Sayeth Melissa McEwan: Utter fuckery, that.
I'm certain there are people in this world who are better people because of their belief in God. In fact, I'm sure there are denizens of this very community who would say that very thing—and more power to them. I don't begrudge anyone their own experience.
My point is only this: It is not the universal fact so many religious people assert it to be. You see, I am a better person as an atheist than I ever was as a Christian.
Much of that is about religion, rather than strictly God-belief itself, but the two are inextricably intertwined for most people (and they certainly were for me). Religion made me self-loathing (no amount of bullshit about equality in God's eyes can undermine the message of refusing to ordain women), but, worse than that, it forced me to label and categorize people—believers, non-believers, sinners, saints, good, evil, redeemed, condemned, us, them—to see the world in black-and-white binaries that closed off half my heart.
And it made me reluctant and unable to admit my failures. Despite all the emphasis on forgiveness, there was never a clear pathway to fully own that for which I was meant to seek absolution. I confessed my fuck-ups to God every week in a monotonously recited plea with the rest of the congregation, and I meant it—but I didn't know how to apologize to the human beings I'd hurt, not really. I didn't know how to accept criticism, or make amends. And I sure as shit didn't know how to examine my privilege.
God may have loved me, and sent his son to die for me, and forgiven me—but he taught me diddly-shit about being a privileged person with internalized prejudices. Love one another. Well, swell. Except loving someone doesn't always prevent me from hurting them. And getting right with God didn't get me right with the people I'd hurt. The message of the savior was that I could sit back and be saved with minimal inconvenience, not to mention negligible self-reflection. I could be stingy with my willingness to admit to anyone other than God my wrongdoing, my mistakes. If it was selfish to let other people live with the pain I caused them, it didn't matter: I needed God's forgiveness alone.
I was learning how to get into Heaven. I wasn't learning how to be a good person.
I wasn't kind; I was judgmental, which is the poisonous soil in which a lack of kindness grows. Giving myself permission to let go of the judgment that was such a fundamental part of god-belief has been one of the greatest gifts I've given myself, and the people around me.
Where once I had judgment, I now have compassion. Where once I was creating distance from other people, I now create connection. Where once "being good" meant following rules for personal reward, now it means something very different: I value life, and the humans living it, much more strongly because I view it as finite. I've only got this life to get it right.
That's not everyone's experience, but it is mine—which I share only to make clear that no one, no one, can rightly claim to have the market cornered on what elicits goodness in humankind. God did not take my "sinful heart" and make me love, or even know, "that which is right and just and good." Walking away from God did that.
Many atheists will say that walking away from God opened their minds; it did that for me, surely, but walking away from God also opened my heart.
