Shakesville

Well. This is hugely depressing.

[Trigger warning.]

Shaker Maria sent along this article from the BBC about a small-scale online survey in Britain which found that "a majority of women believe some rape victims should take responsibility for what happened."

Almost three quarters of the women who believed this said if a victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker's house for a drink.

The survey of more than 1,000 people in London marked the 10th anniversary of the Haven service for rape victims.

More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack.

The study found that women were less forgiving of the victim than men.

Of the women who believed some victims should take responsibility, 71% thought a person should accept responsibility when getting into bed with someone, compared with 57% of men.

Although this was hardly a scientific survey, an Amnesty International report completed five years ago on British attitudes toward rape reported similar conclusions.

These results feel sensational, because ZOMG even women blame victims! But the reality is that when people disproportionately targeted by sexual target victim-blame, it is frequently, among women who have not been raped, an attempt to disassociate from the ugly reality that there's no magic strategy to insulate oneself from all possibility of sexual assault. Or, among victim-blaming survivors, a reflection of guilt and shame—a misplaced feeling of responsibility for one's own rape.

That doesn't make the victim-blaming any more justified (or less depressing), but it does provide a context that most media coverage will lack.

Also absent will be accountability: The British media engages in huge amounts of public victim-blaming especially surrounding (female) drinking.

Britain continues to have one of the lowest rape conviction rates in the industrialized world. That is not unrelated to endemic attitudes, narratives, and publicly-endorsed victim-blaming.

Kevin Smith: Too Fat to Fly; PR Nightmare for Southwest

Yesterday afternoon, my inbox started lighting up wildly with emails about writer, director, and actor Kevin Smith being kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight for being too fat. Smith, who's got 1.6 million followers on Twitter, began tweeting furiously about the incident (right fucking on):

The Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back director said he was booted by the captain after he was seated because he was considered a "safety risk."

"I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?" he wrote, maintaining, "I broke no regulation, offered no 'safety risk' (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?).

"Thank God I don't embarrass easily (bless you, Jersey Girl training)," he continued. "But I don't sulk off either ..." So he promised more tweets zinging the airline in the coming days for telling him "I'm too wide for the sky."

Smith said he refused a $100 voucher offered by Southwest and eventually got on another Southwest flight. He then tweeted a photo of himself on the plane with his cheeks puffed out, writing, "Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off!"

Kate Harding says, quite rightly, "I am so sorry that Kevin Smith, human being, had to go through that. But quite frankly, a part of me is really happy that Kevin Smith, Famous Person With 1.6 Million Twitter Followers, is holding an airline's feet to the fire over this bullshit." And Smith is keenly aware of his dual role, too:

(1/2) Hey @SouthwestAir? Fuck making it right for me just 'cause I have a platform. I sat next to a big girl who was chastised for not buy-
(2/2) ing an extra ticket because "all passengers deserve their space." Fucking flight wasn't even full! Fuck your size-ist policy.

Smith bought two seats, but flew home in one, "with the armrests down," just to prove a point.

Which, let's be honest, is not something everyone can afford to do. I am terrified to fly anywhere these days, in fear that the same thing will happen. Embarrassment would be the least of my worries if I get stuck in another city and told out of nowhere I've got to buy a second seat just to get home.

Open Thread

Hosted by Princess Leia.
(Sorry Spudsy and I got our wires crossed with the Open Thread this morning, Shakers! I'm posting this back up for him, because he's on his way to work now. My apologies if anyone's comment got lost in our dueling Open Thread "Who's on First?" this morning, lol.)

Good Fat? Bad Fat?

Actual conversation:

Friend: I can't remember, but I think peanut-related fats are among the good ones. What is a good fat, anyway?

Cait: Well, I'm a good fat.

Friend: (laughs) Yeah, but I meant chemically.

Cait: Oh, chemically, yes, well, in that case I'm a trans fat.

Thekyoo, thekyoo, I'll be here til Thursday, try the tofu-based veal substitute.

Open Thread

Hosted by Hans Christian Andersen.

This week's open threads have been hosted by Classic Children's Literature sculptures.

Have You Been Automatically Opted-In to Google Buzz?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Google plans to change what it calls the "buzz start-up experience" to remove automatic opt-in and auto-follow. Read their post about it. (H/T to ajoye and car and Scott Madin in comments.)

Like a lot of folks, I use Gmail. A few days ago, Gmail sent me to a screen when I logged in. The screen offered to let me "try" Google Buzz. I clicked "Skip" and went on about my business. However, it turned out that Google Buzz activated automatically, and I actively had to turn it off. This automatic opt-in has caused some trouble for users. Dr. Isis warns her pseudonymous readers that she can see their real names, and Harriet Jacobs of Fugitivus is pretty angry about getting automatically opted-in to Google Buzz. Her blog is now under password protection (I don't know if that change is a coincidence or not), but according to Shane Richmond at The Telegraph,

Harriet Jacobs, who blogs at Fugitivus, is furious about having been opted-in to Google Buzz by default: “I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother. There’s a BIG drop-off between them and my other ‘most frequent’ contacts. You know who my third most frequent contact is? My abusive ex-husband.”

She adds: “My privacy concerns are not trite. They are linked to my actual physical safety, and I will now have to spend the next few days maintaining that safety by continually knocking down followers as they pop up.”

Such cases are, it is to be hoped, rare but they are illustrative of the dangers of the new trend in web services to ‘default to public’.

UPDATE: see also today's open thread for discussion of this issue. The "default to public" trend is dangerous. No matter how pseudonymous your gmail address is, if your real name appears on the account, it will be visible to "followers". Please be aware if you aren't already.

UPDATE: It looks like my helpful instructions below are not enough to turn off Google buzz for real. Check out these instructions from cnet: Buzz off: Disabling Google Buzz. Thanks to BrookeA and Scott Madin in comments on this thread.

The good news is that it's pretty easy to turn off buzz. Just scroll down to the very bottom of your Gmail message page and click "turn off buzz" on the tiny-print, well-hidden "View as" menu:

screen shot of Gmail homepage

screen shot of Gmail homepage

Mine says "turn on buzz" because I have already turned it off. But when I first looked, the link read "turn off buzz", in spite of the fact that I did not activate it and instead told Gmail to "skip" it.

More from Molly Wood at cnet News: Google Buzz: Privacy nightmare.

And from Sam Yerbi at ABH News: Google Buzz Privacy Issues for Gmail Users

Great News

Third Riddick Pic Is Officially On: "While Vin Diesel and David Twohy have been banging the Riddick drum constantly in the years since The Chronicles Of Riddick, the idea of a third film had largely existed as plans and rumours, with no firm commitment from Universal. But following Diesel's cryptic hints about scouting trips last December, the studio has now announced that it will back a new outing for the gruff anti-hero."

Awesome. I can't wait to not watch this one as hard as I didn't watch the first two!

Open Thread

Hosted by Dorothy and Toto.

The Virtual Pub Is Open

[Explanations: HEXFAT. The Overweight. lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]

TFIF, Shakers!

Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!

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, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114. 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.

Quote of the Day

"A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."—Todd Strandberg, founder of the infamous evangelical rapture website, raptureready.com, offering his reservations about the Eternal Earth-Bound Pets service being offered by atheist Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire. For $110 for a 10-year contract (and only $15 more per additional pet!), Centre hooks up rapture-ready Christians with doomed atheists who will take care of pets left ownerless after the rapture.

I'm not sure I can accurately evaluate the width of the cavernous divide between my thought processes and those of someone who so fervently believes the rapture to be a Real Thing in the World (someday) that his primary objection to the idea of charging people $110 to care for their pets after they're raptured outta here is those pets being looked after by atheists.

Who might do something untrustworthy, like cast Fido into a lake of fire and pocket their piddling fee.

Blink.

[Via.]

Tina Fey

[Trigger warning.]

You know, I sort of wanted to write this post today ranting about Tina Fey.

On 30 Rock last night, which I don't normally watch but happened to see part of last night, there was a whole "comedic" subplot about how Jane Krakowski's character gets depressed when her "favorite stalker" stops stalking her and tries to convince him to start again. Ultrafuckery.

And then there's her new Vogue cover, in which her scar (acquired in a random knife attack when she was a child) has been totally disappeared, through a combination of airbrushing, lighting, and Fey's insistence on being filmed/photographed almost exclusively from her right side, which feels really problematic to me in terms of survivor's narratives, and our expectations that women who have been assaulted mask all evidence, physical and emotional, of their trauma. And, ugh, while that's her choice, ugh, she's also choosing to make light of assault on her teevee show, ugh, and these are not unrelated issues, ugh, complicated by the responsibility of celebrity, ugh, whatever that is, ugh, and I am conflicted and irritated, ugh!

And then there's her actual interview with Vogue, in which she once again positions herself as the standard-bearer of "normalcy" (her word), and waxes retrofuck about women's fucked-up relationship with food, and sets up "curvy" and "skinny" as competing forces, and says shit like: "People will say, 'Oh, fashion magazines are so bad, they're giving girls a negative message'—but we're also the fattest country in the world, so it's not like we're all looking at fashion magazines and not eating. Maybe it just starts a shame cycle: I'm never going to look like that model, so...Chicken McNuggets it is! And conversely, I don't look at models who are crazy skinny and think I want to look like that, because a lot of them are gigantic, with giant hands and giant feet."

And all of this made me want to write a post about how Tina Fey isn't Doing Feminism Right, but then I came to my senses, and I realized that if Tina Fey weren't positioned as Hollywood's Token Feminist, and if, instead, the entertainment industry was filled with fabulous feminist and womanist women of every stripe and shape and color and age and sexuality and gender and ability and philosophy, whose ideas and projects and opinions were everywhere, as ubiquitous as the ideas and projects and opinions of misogynists, if that's the world in which we lived, I wouldn't even have to care about Tina Fey.

And that's not really Tina Fey's fault.

The Struggle For Freedom

I don't know what is going on at the bulletin board upstairs, but there is some heavy drama, apparently. Note this new sign:

It reads: "Allow others their freedoms, don't tamper with signs others post —". Are the Pagan Club and the Red Cross Blood Drive battling it for the hearts and minds of the accounting staff? I wonder.

Insert Sad Trombone Noise Here

It's always nice to end the week with a laugh:

Defeated just two years ago as the Republican presidential candidate and with his bonafides as a true conservative again being challenged, John McCain finds himself in a struggle to get even his party's nomination for another term in the Senate.

Poor McCain. LOLOLOLOL!!!

Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of the Hexfat Spellbook.

Recommended Reading:

Rolling Around In My Head: Disability 101

Lance Mannion: Thomas Jefferson fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho...

Doobybrain: New 2010 Penny Design Unveiled

Cliffie's Notes: Squid Invasion Of Orange County Roaring Success

AFOTD: Imperial Troop Transport

Leave your links in comments...

Daily Kitteh

Sophie.

Yay Diversity

Race & Gender of Judges Make Enormous Differences in Rulings, Studies Find:

A judge's race or gender makes for a dramatic difference in the outcome of cases they hear—at least for cases in which race and gender allegedly play a role in the conduct of the parties, according to two recent studies.

The results were the focus of a program about "Diversity on the Bench: Is the 'Wise Latina' a Myth?," sponsored by the ABA Judicial Division at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Orlando on Saturday afternoon.

In federal racial harassment cases, one study (PDF) found that plaintiffs lost just 54 percent of the time when the judge handling the case was an African-American. Yet plaintiffs lost 81 percent of the time when the judge was Hispanic, 79 percent when the judge was white, and 67 percent of the time when the judge was Asian American.

...A second study (PDF), looked at 556 federal appellate cases involving allegations of sexual harassment or sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The finding: plaintiffs were at least twice as likely to win if a female judge was on the appellate panel.

University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor Pat K. Chew, who co-authored the racial harassment study, said she found "the rule of law is intact" in the cases she reviewed. Judges—no matter which side they ruled for—took the same procedural steps to reach their decisions, she said.

But judges of different races took different approaches "on how to interpret the facts of the cases," she said.

...The program took its title from a much-debated comment made years ago by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

The participants never answered the question of whether a Latina judge reaches better conclusions, but at least in some cases, it appears likely that she would reach a different conclusion from a white male jurist hearing the same evidence.

Thanks to Shaker juicepockets for sending that along.

It shouldn't matter, in terms of having each person's judicial needs and issues fairly addressed (and addressed using nonmarginalizing language), what the percentage of women and/or people of color and/or LGBTQIs and/or people with disabilities in judicial positions is, but it does. Just like it makes a difference whether male legislators have daughters. It always matters, because, unfortunately, we live in a very lopsided and still largely segregated culture, where a white person, for example, can go their entire lives never having to know a person of color on a personal level. That situation inevitably begets ignorance, which can manifest in overtly malicious expressions of bigtory or unintentional (but not innocuous) offense.

Ooh, Yes Please

Kate Winslet + Todd Haynes + James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce = WIN.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Jam: "Start"

Today in Fat Hatin'

Hold onto your seats, fatsronauts...!

1. New research (yay! research!) "suggests that the 'tipping point' in obesity often occurs before two years of age, and sometimes as early as three months, when the child is learning how much and what to eat." OMFG.

Erylin points out that, at three months, "are trying desperately to gain ENOUGH weight. … kids grow…they get all fat, then they inch out…but every time their bmi spikes we need to rush to the doctor to get them on diet formula?"

All children put on weight before growth spurts—and surely all of us know thin adults who were chubby throughout their entire childhoods, especially men who, in adulthood, are over 6'.

I understand that some fat babies will grow up to be fat adults, but staging an intervention as early as three months of age is just gobsmacking. Especially since many fat adults weren't fat babies. (Like me.)

2. The loathsome Mike Luckovich weighs in (pun intended) on Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign with a cartoon that manages to fit DEATHFAT, HEXFAT, couch potato, and mother-blaming narratives into one square. Har har, this family's so fat even the CAT is fat! Bingo. [H/T to Shaker FemmeForever.]