Shakesville

"I'm doing this to demystify abortion."

Shakers KarateMonkey and Leah emailed me about Angie the Anti-Theist, a blogger whose birth control failed, resulting in a pregnancy which she decided to terminate. And she decided to use the occasion of her abortion to talk about it, via Twitter and YouTube. "I'm doing this to demystify abortion," she explains. "I just wanna let everybody know that you, too, can have an abortion, if you want one."

[Transcript below.]

Hi, YouTube. This is Angie the Antitheist. This is not a scripted video, so I apologize for the higher incidents of ums and you knows.

I found out about a week ago, Saturday, that I was pregnant. Um, for a variety of reasons, including, uh, very high health risks for me, I am having an abortion. Right now.

They have abortion by pill now—RU-486. I went to the doctor, Planned Parenthood, had blood tests and everything else done; they did a sonogram to check the state of my pregnancy; I'm at only four weeks, one—I was at only four weeks, one day, when I went into the office on Thursday. Um, they sent me home with some medicines; I've taken those. They take awhile to set in; I ended up actually going and getting a second dose, uh, but, uh, yeah, I'm having an abortion right now. It's not that bad. It's not that scary. It's basically like a miscarriage.

I'm live-tweeting my abortion on Twitter. Not for some publicity stunt, or attention, or to justify this to myself; I am at peace with my decision.

I'm doing this to demystify abortion. I'm doing this so that other women know, "Hey, it's not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was." It's just not that bad.

This is nothing compared to childbirth. Compared to labor. Compared to, for me and my risks, late-stage pregnancy. This is the best choice. And it's not that bad. And I want people to know that it's out there, that, if you need this, there's non-surgical options available, especially in the earliest stage of pregnancy. Um, obviously, everybody use protection, uh, sometimes that doesn't work, and, when it doesn't, there's the morning-after pill, and, if you're not in time for that, there's RU-486.

So, I just wanna let everybody know that, uh, you, too, can have an abortion, if you want one. It's okay. It's not shameful. It's not secret. It's not killing a child. I have a little boy. You guys have seen him on my video channel. He is my world. I wanna stay alive and be his mom for a lot longer. So I'm having an abortion.

My So-Called Photo of the Day

Angela Chase and Jordan Catalano, Fifteen Years Later. That's all well and good, but where the hell are Rickie and Krakow? [Photo credit: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images.]

Fuck I'm old.

Vloggin' with Blogginz, Episode 12

[Episodes One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven.]

Summer movie preview. Totally not made up as we go along, ahem.

[Also available at Daily Motion. Full transcript here.]

Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"

See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[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.]

Daily Kitteh

Tongue sticking out = Maximum happiness achieved.

Jobs Bill Passes Senate

Senate passes $15 billion jobs bill on bipartisan vote: "The Senate easily passed a $15 billion jobs bill on Wednesday morning ... The measure passed 70 to 28, with 13 Republicans joining 57 Democrats in support of the package. ... The next stop is the House, where Democratic leaders are weighing whether to pass the Senate version or go to conference to reconcile it with the $154 billion jobs bill the House passed in December."

I remain amazed how many of the GOP caucus refused to vote for this bill.

Discuss.

Wednesday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Liss' Lost Lust Pillow Covers, for all your sleepytime kiss-practicing needs.

Recommended Reading:

Rachel: Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage

Renee: Vancouver Games & First Nations Resistance

avendya: Disability Blog Carnival #63: Relationships

Echidne: On That Public Option

Laura: Scotland Yard Staff to be Trained in Psychological Effects of Rape

LeMew: Two Facts about the Supreme Court

Leave your links in comments...

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Oren Lavie: "Her Morning Elegance"

Wow

Shakers, I literally just read an article in Newsweek dissecting how female lovers of famous men should behave, and wondering what makes Rielle Hunter, John Edwards' lover (partner? I don't know their status), have such a "quiet dignity," while the women who slept with Tiger Woods "talked, posed, opined, and disappeared before we could even concentrate long enough to learn their names."

I just...wow.

I don't even know where to begin. Have at it in comments.

Quote of the Day

"I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that's a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life." — Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills 2010, and Miss California competitor, on homosexuality. Ashley reassures us "I have a lot of friends that are gay," so it's all good.

Speaking for myself, I don't have any friends I want put to death, but that's just me.

Impossibly Beautiful

We haven't had a male entry in this series since Clive Owen's ghastly Lancôme advert, mostly because men are generally allowed to look reasonably like themselves in ads and on the covers of magazines. But this photo of Matthew Fox on the cover of Emmy magazine is a good example of how men's freedom to age in public is slowly being eroded, too:

Zuh to the wuh? It looks like they recycled his head from some kind of leftover promo shot from the first season of Party of Five, and then airbrushed that into oblivion. Matthew Fox is 43 years old, and, minus the fake headwound and dirtying-up island makeup, he looks like this:

He has a wonderfully expressive face, and he's damned well earned the lines that mark it; the furrows and creases left by knitted brows and broad smiles are the legacy of being a successful actor, a husband, a father who worries and laughs. Erasing them hides the legacy of his lived life.

[Click to embiggen.]
Occasionally, when there is evidence that male public figures are being treated to the same demeaning "beautifying" processes that turn human people into mannequins, I hear someone saying some variation on, "Good. Let's get rid of that double standard!"

But adding unrealistic, dehumanized images of men to the vast ocean of unrealistic, dehumanized images of women, subjecting men to the same oppressively rigid beauty standards to which women are held, is hardly an improvement. It's a step forward only in a race to the bottom, and there is little to be gained by treating service to the lowest common denominator as a favorable equalizer.

------------------------

By way of reminder: Comments that try to suss out what changes, exactly, were made, and even comments noting that, for example, the removal of laugh lines because they are ZOMG wrinkles actually robs a face of its character or humanity, are welcome. Discussions of how "he looks handsomer/hotter/better in the candid picture" and associated commentary (which would certainly make me feel like shit if I were the person being discussed) are not. So please comment in keeping with the series' intent, implicit in which is the question: If no one can ever be beautiful enough, then to what end is the pursuit of an elusive perfection?

[Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38.]

Lost Open Thread

(Jack + Tears = Jears.)
Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...

Today in Rape Culture

[Trigger warning.]

Shaker samanthab sent me a New York Times article, headlined "French Ad Shocks, but Will It Stop Young Smokers?" the first paragraph of which reads: "A new French antismoking advertisement aimed at the young that plays off a pornographic stereotype has gotten more attention than even its creators intended, and critics suggest that it offends common decency and creates a false analogy between oral sex and smoking."

Which is only accurate if you think "oral sex" is a euphemism for sexual assault.

The slogan is bland enough: "To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco." But it accompanies photographs of an older man, his torso seen from the side, pushing down on the head of a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes are at belt level, glancing upward fearfully. The cigarette appears to emerge from the adult's trousers.

Two other ads show young men in the same position as the girl, though the adult is wearing a suit jacket and a watch.

The ads are viewable here.

At minimum, if one inexplicably imagines, despite the reluctant and fearful expressions on the models' faces and the heavy, directive hand on their heads, that the analogical sex act is consensual, it appears to be statutory rape. But even that is an absurd stretch, given that the tagline of the ad equates smoking/the analogical sex act with being enslaved—which explicitly excludes the possibility of consent.

Florence Montreynaud, the feminist president of La Meute des Chiennes de Garde [the Pack of Female Watchdogs], which identifies and opposes symbols of sexual violence in films and advertising in France, said the ads are "unbearable" and "shocking [in their] banalization of sexual violence." And despite being "a longtime member of Droits des Non-fumeurs [Nonsmokers' Rights]," the anti-smoking group that created the ad, she strongly objects to the campaign: "I'm appalled. It's a poverty of imagination. When people have no ideas, they use female bodies." Indeed so.

Meanwhile, Gérard Audureau, the president of Droits des Non-fumeurs, defends the ad by saying, "Using sex is a way to get [young people's] attention. And if it's necessary to shock, let's shock."

Except, of course, that what's being shown in the ad doesn't look like "sex." It looks like sexual assault.

And thus necessarily implies that, like not smoking, not being sexually assaulted is simply a matter of making the choice not to.

Proud Mama

Arachnophobia warning!

I'm putting this video below a fold, because even the still image would probably freak out arachnophobes.

I, on the other hand—being the sort of spider aficionado who has invited, just to get a closer look, anything from common house spiders to tarantulas crawl on her (the teensy, quick, scampering ones make me screech-giggle when they scurry across or near me, but tarantulas are super mellow)—think this video of a female wolf spider with babies on her back is amazing.

[Via Chris.]

Open Thread

Hosted by Hoodoo.

Question of the Day

[We've done this one before, but it's one of my favorites, so I'm doing it again…]

Who will play you in Shakesville: The Movie?

Looks-wise, the obvious choice is Dawn French, to whom I am nearly identical in height and weight, and probably not dissimilar in temperament. She's 17 years older than I, but I won't complain if she won't.

Quote of the Day

"John Yoo is a moral vacuum, but he is also a constitutional law professor at one of the nation's top law schools and a former Supreme Court clerk. ... So when John Yoo claims that the President is not bound by Congressional limits, he is not simply ignorant or misunderstanding the law. He is lying."—Ian Millhiser, on former Bush administration legal adviser John Yoo, who famously made the case for the use of torture tactics on detainees, and who is now busily making the public argument that the US president can justifiably "massacre" entire villages of civilians in wartime because "the government places those decisions in the president, and if the Congress doesn't like it they can cut off funds for it or they can impeach him."

Help Amelia

Amelia, a 27-year-old Nicaraguan woman, has a ten-year-old daughter. She also has cancer and desperately needs treatment, but is being denied care because she's pregnant. Abortion is entirely illegal in Nicaragua, even in a case like Amelia's where she needs a therapeutic abortion to save her life. In Amelia's case, it's not just abortion that is being denied — it's treatment for the cancer as well, since such treatment could harm the fetus. Amelia might die and her ten-year-old daughter may be left without her mother because of "pro-life" orthodoxy.

Women's groups are asking for help. Please visit RH Reality Check to see the full list of contacts – and please, send emails and spread the word.

I'll also recommend to USians (as always) writing to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to urge diplomatic pressure. We've got a feminist Secretary of State who makes women's issues a global priority; let us not be afraid to solicit her help! Sample letter:

Dear Secretary Clinton:

I have recently become aware that Amelia, a pregnant Nicaraguan woman and mother to a 10-year-old daughter who is being denied a therapeutic abortion and effective cancer treatment to save her life, because abortion is completely illegal in Nicaragua.

Women's groups in Nicaragua and international organizations working with them have asked people to immediately contact the chair and vice-chair of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), as well as Nicaraguan government officials.

As I am aware of and resoundingly support your advocacy on behalf of women worldwide, I am hopeful that there will be a swift response from the US State Department on Amelia's behalf.

Sincerely,
Melissa McEwan
Indiana

Mighty Whities

Hmm. Does anyone else notice anything peculiar that the gentlemen featured in Details' "Next Generation of Hollywood's Leading Men" gallery all appear to have in common...?

It's a veritable rainbow of conformity!

[H/T to Andy.]

Assvertising

Shaker Gretchen emailed me about this new Snickers ad, in which white dudebros just aren't themselves when they're hungry. They're divas!

[Transcript below.]
One of the things I like most about this ad, ahem, is its implication that only divas complain about being too hot or having someone kick the back of their seats. The premise is reliant on, and simultaneously perpetuates, the gendered narratives about suffering and communication. Men are stoic, and suffer in silence. Women, on the other hand, are whiny complainers.

Men endure.

Bitches bitch.

The gutting irony of admonishing a man to "stick this candy bar in your mouth and stop acting like such a woman" is that the persistent message that being a man means eating shitty food puts men who strictly adhere to this "Junkfood manly! Vegetables girly!" narrative in greater risk of needing medical care later in life, while the persistent message that men suffer in silence makes those same men less likely to seek that care.

That's some real man-hating garbage, right there. And it sure ain't the responsibility of feminists, despite the fact that we're the ones with the reputation as man-haters.

[Four people are in a car on a road trip: One young black man (driving), one young dark-haired white man (passenger seat), one young ginger-haired white man (driver's side backseat), and Aretha Franklin.]

Franklin: Can we turn the AC up? [fans self] I'm dying back here.

Dark-Haired White Man: It's on. Can't you feel it?

Franklin: [slaps Dark-Haired White Man upside the head] Can you feel that?

Black Man: Oh-ooh!

Ginger-Haired White Man: [offers Franklin a Snickers bar] Jeff, eat a Snickers, please.

Franklin: [grabs Snickers] Why?

Ginger-Haired White Man: Every time you get hungry, you turn into a diva. Just eat it so we can all coexist—

Franklin: [unwraps Sinckers bar] Ooh, I turn into a diva!

Black Man: Mm-hmm!

Dark-Haired White Man: Put it in your system, crankypants.

Franklin: [starts to eat Snickers] Okay.

Black Man: Thank you.

[Franklin turns into a young fair-haired white man.]

Ginger-Haired White Man: Better?

Fair-Haired White Man: Better.

[Dark-Haired White Man turns into Liza Minelli.]

Minelli: Will you get your knees outta the back of my seat?

Fair-Haired White Man: Whoa-oo!

Voiceover (and text onscreen): You're not you when you're hungry. Snickers satisfies.

[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 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.]