We had a major computer meltdown at Shakes Manor this weekend due to some insane virus that actually disabled our anti-virus protection. I don't know where we picked it up; Iain hadn't even been on the computer in ages, and I haven't visited any sites I haven't visited a hundred times before, so that's pretty scary.
Anyway, we were backed up and Iain was able to wipe the system, but I'm going to be a little slow today as I put things back together. So bear with me... Sorry, Shakers.
Blog Note
On the Air
Tonight at 8pm EST, I will be joining Renee of Womanist Musings and Monica of TransGriot on the Womanist Musings Blog Talk Radio Show, where, with their other guest, Cara of The Curvature, we'll be discussing the rape culture and the Roman Polanski mess.
At the link, you'll find the call-in number, if you'd like to participate, and, if you can't listen live, Renee will be posting the podcast on Monday.
UPDATE: The podcast is now available here. My thanks again to Renee for inviting me!
Saturday Open Thread
Tab Hunter offers Roddy McDowall his sausage.
Roddy has something chocolatey for Tab.
To Pledge or, you know, not
A conversation with our newest Kindy kiddo last night had me rooting through my closet and dusting off my soapbox. Yesterday, the conversation was about the Pledge of Allegiance and also how he feels he has to say it and has to say it a particular way (re: using "under God"). Which brings me back to my soapbox. Now, what I'm about to say is Very Controversial!™ in many parts:
I don't think the Pledge should be said as a morning ritual in schools. At all.
No, not just standing or sitting quietly while others say it. No, not just omitting the "under God" part. Not saying it at all.
Certainly, as an atheist who has two (thus far) self-declared atheist children, I find the "under God" aspect...irritating....from that perspective. I also find it ridiculous, as a whole, because of the reasons it was put in the pledge to begin with ("Scary commies! Godless commies!"). It was an unnecessary addition made in fear by reactionaries.
But that's really not the entire reason.
Now, I understand that rote memorization of nationalistic sayings from a young age has the chance to help make for good 'n' patriotic future citizens who will be willing to take bullets to protect the country (or otherwise support warfare to protect its interest). Which, from a State perspective, is not unimportant. So it's not surprising that it's a ritual done in schools nationwide, every morning (which is vaguely idolatrous but I digress). Reminds me a bit of the phrase "it's just good business".
However. I entirely disagree with the PoA being a rote exercise for children. The idea of making children swear their allegiance, and therefore themselves, to a country is absurd. Five (six, seven, eight...) year olds don’t know any better and – no matter the country – it is a propagandic form of subtle brainwashing when children are made to pledge themselves to it in a ritual manner.
I know some people will say "hey, I said it every day and I didn't have my brains sucked out of my head". Well, yes. And? If it's no big deal and little more than a national jingle, then it doesn't really mean anything anyway and why not get rid of it? Of course, there are those who utterly freak out about people who merely sit down (or stand quietly) and not recite the pledge. They think those (non) actions are disrespectful. To them, I'd ask, if it's such a big deal that merely standing quietly during it is disrespect, then shouldn't it be something that is said with a little more understanding than school children can give to the meaning behind the words they're saying? I also ask: is it really "patriotic" or "patriotism" if it's children memorizing and reciting because they think they should? That would be no.
There is nothing inherently wrong with pledging your own allegiance to a particular country but one must do so under one’s own free will and from understanding, not rote memorization. There is also nothing inherently wrong with having pride in one’s own country--but that pride should come from the way the country works for its citizens, not because it was ingrained into a person from a very young age to love it.
Of Course
'Cuz no women belong in the military in the first place!
All the services kicked out a disproportionate number of women under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, according to Department of Defense data obtained by the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The center studies gender and sexuality in the military.Victims of homophobia and misogyny in one fell swoop. Awesome.
...In the Air Force, a majority of those removed were women, the first time a service has had such a record since the implementation of the controversial law in 1994, according to Palm Center senior research fellow Nathaniel Frank.
In fiscal year 2008, the Air Force dismissed 56 women and 34 men.
In addition, the Army removed more women under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy at a greater rate than men when compared with the ratio of women to men in each service.
Of those discharged under the policy, 36 percent were women, although women make up only 14 percent of troops in the Army, the data showed.
Contact the Department of Defense and politely urge them to revoke DADT once and for all and implement other necessary changes to make US military culture more welcoming for gay and/or female soldiers who want to serve their country.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strips One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46. 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.
Get out of the way!
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who recently gained notoriety by saying the Republicans' healthcare plan was that Americans should not get sick and die quickly when they do, let loose on the floor of the House last night, saying he would not apologize and telling the GOP to get out of the way. Awesome. [H/T to Shaker Constant Comment.]
[Transcript below.]
Madame Speaker, I have words for both Democrats and Republicans tonight. Let's start with the Democrats.
We as a party have spent the last six months, the greatest minds of our party, dwelling on the question, the unbelievably consuming question, of how to get Olympia Snowe to vote for healthcare reform.
I want to remind us all: Olympia Snowe was not elected president last year. Olympia Snowe has no veto power in the Senate. Olympia Snowe represents a state with one-half of one percent of America's population.
What America wants is healthcare reform. America doesn't care if it gets fifty-one votes in the Senate or sixty votes in the Senate or eighty-three votes in the Senate. In fact, America doesn't even care about that; it doesn't care about that at all. What America cares about is this: There are over one million Americans who go broke every single year trying to pay their healthcare bills. America cares a lot about that.
America cares about the fact that there are forty-four thousand, seven hundred, eighty Americans who die every single year on account of not having healthcare. That's a hundred and twenty-two every day. America sure cares a lot about that.
America cares about the fact that if you have a preexisting condition, even if you have health insurance, it's not covered. America cares about that a lot.
America cares about the fact that you can get all the healthcare you need, as long as you don't need any. America cares about that a lot.
But America does not care about procedures, processes, personalities—America doesn't care about that at all. So we have to remember that as Democrats. We have to remember that what's at stake here is life and death, enormous amounts of money, and people are counting upon us to move ahead. America understands what's good for America. America cares about healthcare; America cares about jobs; America cares about education, about energy independence. America does not care about process or politicians or personalities or anything like that.
And I have a few words for my Republican friends tonight, as well. I guess I do have some Republican friends [grins].
Let me say this: Last week, I held up this report here and I pointed out that, in America, there is forty-four thousand, seven hundred, eighty-nine Americans who die every year—according to this Harvard report, published in a peer-reviewed journal—because they have no health insurance. That's an extra forty-four thousand, seven hundred, eighty-nine Americans who die, whose lives could be saved.
And their response was to ask me for an apology. To ask me for an apology. That's right—to ask me for an apology.
Well, I'm telling you this: I will not apologize. I will NOT apologize!
I will not apologize for a simple reason: America doesn't care about your feelings! I violated no rules by pulling this report to America's attention; I think a lot of people didn't know about it beforehand.
But America does care about healthcare in America. And if you're against it, then get out of the way! Just get out of the way. You can lead, you can follow, or you can get out of the way. And I'm telling you now to get out of the way.
America understands that there's one party in this country that's in favor of healthcare reform, and one party that's against it, and they know why. They understand that if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation. They understand that if Barack Obama could somehow bring about world peace, they'd blame him for destroying the defense industry. In fact, they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon!
But that's not what America wants. America wants solutions to its problems, and that begins with healthcare, and that's what I'm speaking for tonight.
I yield the rest of my time.
Rape Culture 101
[Trigger warning.]
Frequently, I receive requests to provide a definition of the term "rape culture." I've referred people to the Wikipedia entry on rape culture, which is pretty good, and I like the definition provided in Transforming a Rape Culture:
A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.But my correspondents—whether they are dewy noobs just coming to feminism, advanced feminists looking for a source, or disbelievers in the existence of the rape culture—always seem to be looking for something more comprehensive and less abstract: What is the rape culture? What are its borders? What does it look like and sound like and feel like?
In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.
It is not a definition for which they're looking; not really. It's a description. It's something substantive enough to reach out and touch, in all its ugly, heaving, menacing grotesquery.
Rape culture is encouraging male sexual aggression. Rape culture is regarding violence as sexy and sexuality as violent. Rape culture is treating rape as a compliment, as the unbridled passion stirred in a healthy man by a beautiful woman, making irresistible the urge to rip open her bodice or slam her against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, or pull her by her hair, or shove her onto a bed, or any one of a million other images of fight-fucking in movies and television shows and on the covers of romance novels that convey violent urges are inextricably linked with (straight) sexuality.
Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality. Rape culture is privileging heterosexuality because ubiquitous imagery of two adults of the same-sex engaging in egalitarian partnerships without gender-based dominance and submission undermines (erroneous) biological rationales for the rape culture's existence.
Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms."
Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch"). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men's prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.
Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn't follow all the rules it's your fault.
Rape culture is victim-blaming. Rape culture is a judge blaming a child for her own rape. Rape culture is a minister blaming his child victims. Rape culture is accusing a child of enjoying being held hostage, raped, and tortured. Rape culture is spending enormous amounts of time finding any reason at all that a victim can be blamed for hir own rape.
Rape culture is judges banning the use of the word rape in the courtroom. Rape culture is the media using euphemisms for sexual assault. Rape culture is stories about rape being featured in the Odd News.
Rape culture is tasking victims with the burden of rape prevention. Rape culture is encouraging women to take self-defense as though that is the only solution required to preventing rape. Rape culture is admonishing women to "learn common sense" or "be more responsible" or "be aware of barroom risks" or "avoid these places" or "don't dress this way," and failing to admonish men to not rape.
Rape culture is "nothing" being the most frequent answer to a question about what people have been formally taught about rape.
Rape culture is boys under 10 years old knowing how to rape.
Rape culture is the idea that only certain people rape—and only certain people get raped. Rape culture is ignoring that the thing about rapists is that they rape people. They rape people who are strong and people who are weak, people who are smart and people who are dumb, people who fight back and people who submit just to get it over with, people who are sluts and people who are prudes, people who rich and people who are poor, people who are tall and people who are short, people who are fat and people who are thin, people who are blind and people who are sighted, people who are deaf and people who can hear, people of every race and shape and size and ability and circumstance.
Rape culture is the narrative that sex workers can't be raped. Rape culture is the assertion that wives can't be raped. Rape culture is the contention that only nice girls can be raped.
Rape culture is refusing to acknowledge that the only thing that the victim of every rapist shares in common is bad fucking luck. Rape culture is refusing to acknowledge that the only thing a person can do to avoid being raped is never be in the same room as a rapist. Rape culture is avoiding talking about what an absurdly unreasonable expectation that is, since rapists don't announce themselves or wear signs or glow purple.
Rape culture is people meant to protect you raping you instead—like parents, teachers, doctors, ministers, cops, soldiers, self-defense instructors.
Rape culture is a serial rapist being appointed to a federal panel that makes decisions regarding women's health.
Rape culture is a ruling that says women cannot withdraw consent once sex commences.
Rape culture is a collective understanding about classifications of rapists: The "normal" rapist (whose crime is most likely to be dismissed with a "boys will be boys" sort of jocular apologia) is the man who forces himself on attractive women, women his age in fine health and form, whose crime is disturbingly understandable to his male defenders. The "real sickos" are the men who go after children, old ladies, the disabled, accident victims languishing in comas—the sort of people who can't fight back, whose rape is difficult to imagine as titillating, unlike the rape of "pretty girls," so easily cast in a fight-fuck fantasy of squealing and squirming and eventual relenting to the "flattery" of being raped.
Rape culture is the insistence on trying to distinguish between different kinds of rape via the use of terms like "gray rape" or "date rape."
Rape culture is pervasive narratives about rape that exist despite evidence to the contrary. Rape culture is pervasive imagery of stranger rape, even though women are three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their home, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street, making what is commonly referred to as "date rape" by far the most prevalent type of rape. Rape culture is pervasive insistence that false reports are common, although they are less common (1.6%) than false reports of auto theft (2.6%). Rape culture is pervasive claims that women make rape accusations willy-nilly, when 61% of rapes remain unreported.
Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that there is a "typical" way to behave after being raped, instead of the acknowledgment that responses to rape are as varied as its victims, that, immediately following a rape, some women go into shock; some are lucid; some are angry; some are ashamed; some are stoic; some are erratic; some want to report it; some don't; some will act out; some will crawl inside themselves; some will have healthy sex lives; some never will again.
Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that a rape victim who reports hir rape is readily believed and well-supported, instead of acknowledging that reporting a rape is a huge personal investment, a difficult process that can be embarrassing, shameful, hurtful, frustrating, and too often unfulfilling. Rape culture is ignoring that there is very little incentive to report a rape; it's a terrible experience with a small likelihood of seeing justice served.
Rape culture is hospitals that won't do rape kits, disbelieving law enforcement, unmotivated prosecutors, hostile judges, victim-blaming juries, and paltry sentencing.
Rape culture is the fact that higher incidents of rape tend to correlate with lower conviction rates.
Rape culture is silence around rape in the national discourse, and in rape victims' homes. Rape culture is treating surviving rape as something of which to be ashamed. Rape culture is families torn apart because of rape allegations that are disbelieved or ignored or sunk to the bottom of a deep, dark sea in an iron vault of secrecy and silence.
Rape culture is the objectification of women, which is part of a dehumanizing process that renders consent irrelevant. Rape culture is treating women's bodies like public property. Rape culture is street harassment and groping on public transportation and equating raped women's bodies to a man walking around with valuables hanging out of his pockets. Rape culture is most men being so far removed from the threat of rape that invoking property theft is evidently the closest thing many of them can imagine to being forcibly subjected to a sexual assault.
Rape culture is treating 13-year-old girls like trophies for men regarded as great artists.
Rape culture is ignoring the way in which professional environments that treat sexual access to female subordinates as entitlements of successful men can be coercive and compromise enthusiastic consent.
Rape culture is a convicted rapist getting a standing ovation at Cannes, a cameo in a hit movie, and a career resurgence in which he can joke about how he hates seeing people get hurt.
Rape culture is when running dogfights is said to elicit more outrage than raping a woman would.
Rape culture is blurred lines between persistence and coercion. Rape culture is treating diminished capacity to consent as the natural path to sexual activity.
Rape culture is pretending that non-physical sexual assaults, like peeping tomming, is totally unrelated to brutal and physical sexual assaults, rather than viewing them on a continuum of sexual assault.
Rape culture is diminishing the gravity of any sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, or culture of actual or potential coercion in any way.
Rape culture is using the word "rape" to describe something that has been done to you other than a forced or coerced sex act. Rape culture is saying things like "That ATM raped me with a huge fee" or "The IRS raped me on my taxes."
Rape culture is rape being used as entertainment, in movies and television shows and books and in video games.
Rape culture is television shows and movies leaving rape out of situations where it would be a present and significant threat in real life.
Rape culture is Amazon offering to locate "rape" products for you.
Rape culture is rape jokes. Rape culture is rape jokes on t-shirts, rape jokes in college newspapers, rape jokes in soldiers' home videos, rape jokes on the radio, rape jokes on news broadcasts, rape jokes in magazines, rape jokes in viral videos, rape jokes in promotions for children's movies, rape jokes on Page Six (and again!), rape jokes on the funny pages, rape jokes on TV shows, rape jokes on the campaign trail, rape jokes on Halloween, rape jokes in online content by famous people, rape jokes in online content by non-famous people, rape jokes in headlines, rape jokes onstage at clubs, rape jokes in politics, rape jokes in one-woman shows, rape jokes in print campaigns, rape jokes in movies, rape jokes in cartoons, rape jokes in nightclubs, rape jokes on MTV, rape jokes on late-night chat shows, rape jokes in tattoos, rape jokes in stand-up comedy, rape jokes on websites, rape jokes at awards shows, rape jokes in online contests, rape jokes in movie trailers, rape jokes on the sides of buses, rape jokes on cultural institutions…
Rape culture is people objecting to the detritus of the rape culture being called oversensitive, rather than people who perpetuate the rape culture being regarded as not sensitive enough.
Rape culture is the myriad ways in which rape is tacitly and overtly abetted and encouraged having saturated every corner of our culture so thoroughly that people can't easily wrap their heads around what the rape culture actually is.
That's hardly everything. It's merely the tip of an unfathomable iceberg.
Friday Blogaround
The blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, presenters of the Shakesville Prize For Not Being A Total Douchebag.
Joe. My. God.: More Lies From Protect Marriage
Rolling Around In My Head: This Chair
Doobybrain: Repurposed Gas Stations
Action Figure of the Day: Rebel Commando
Tom Colicchio: On Bottoms
I Can Has Cheezburger?: *tickle* *tickle* *tickle*
Dharma Pancakes: Dez Does The Timewarp Again
Leave your links in comments...
I hate the world.
Apparently, we've run out of human women to objectify, so now Marge Simpson needs to appear naked in Playboy.
Kansas State Diversity Fail
Nice:
The Student Senate at Kansas State University at Salina has rejected a request to fund a transgender speaker.I went to look for more information on the story and found this bit of ridiculous lolsobbery:
Transgender male speaker Ryan Sallans was to speak at the university Nov. 23. But the university's Student Governing Association on Tuesday rejected a request for $1,000 to pay Sallans' fees and expenses.
"The senators felt it was a waste of student money, that no students would attend," [Shae Blackwell, student body vice president on the K-State at Salina Student Governing Association] said. "We had 75 people at the meeting and three-fourths were there to support the bill."Some of whom had come from another campus just for the meeting.
But no one would attend!
*clunk*
[H/T to Shaker Kim.]
Hey Hey It's Blackface
As you may have heard, Harry Connick, Jr. recently appeared on the reunion show of a popular 1980's Australian television show, Hey Hey It's Saturday, which included an amateur talent competition. One of the acts was a group of white men who performed as the Jackson Five (even though there are six of them) in blackface.
Connick, who was judging the competition, was rightly appalled, and awarded them a 0. Later in the show, the host apologized to Connick, who said if he'd known that was going to be a part of the show, he wouldn't have done it.
Renee from Womanist Musings, whose post on the topic is here, and I were emailing about it yesterday (which I am posting with her permission):
Renee: It was beyond a fail. To say I was gobsmacked would be the understatement of year.
Liss: My first reaction was to the audience's reaction to it—and then the show's defense of it. "Oh, yeah, we understand it's problematic in America but it's TOTALLY COOL IN AUSTRALIA!" What the hell? It looks to me that in the audience shot at 3:09, there's not a single POC in the crowd, which is just...wow. And the fact that these guys are doctors?! Good lord. No one thinks it's problematic that doctors, who, presumably have POC among their patients, are virulent racists?! Honestly, I just could *not* believe what I was seeing.
Renee: It is disturbing to see that ppl are defending this or only apologizing for offending Harry. Of course the Black people that they offended don't deserve an apology.
Liss: In good news, I'm getting *lots* of emails about this, and not just from people of color, and not just from Americans. It's sad that outrage is comforting, but it is.
Renee: Outrage gives you hope. When I just want to pack my bags and say I am done someone inevitably gives me hope by showing that they get it and it takes the sting out of the pain. Like you said, Liss, teaspoons go a long way.
-------------
If our Aussie readers have suggestions for where best to aim our teaspoons, particularly in support of Black Australians, please let us know in comments.
Finally, Bluemilk's comprehensive post on this, titled "Hey Hey It's Offensive in Australia, Too" is also a must-read on this subject.
Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize
Big news this morning:
President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee [stated] that it was trying "to promote what [Obama] stands for and the positive processes that have started now." It lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.
U.S. Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele contended that Obama won the prize as a result of his "star power" rather than meaningful accomplishments.Discuss.
