Grab your barf-bags, Shakers...
"Sometimes I got carried away rallying the country. I think the swagger criticism was fair. A lot of others weren't. I hope I conveyed a sense that I was a lowly sinner who found redemption. I'm not better than anyone else. What makes me different from others is that I realized I needed help. I'm religious—I confess. One of the challenges in life is: Maintaining religious piety is harder when the pressure is off than when it is on. But now there is still a dependency in a greater grace."—Former President George Bush, at "a reunion breakfast that was the inaugural event for the Bush-Cheney Alumni Association." What a fun shindig that must have been.
"Hey—'member the time we outed a CIA operative?"
"Yeah! How 'bout that time we started a war of choice in Iraq?!"
"Good times."
"Them was the days, boys! Them was the days!"
Quote of the Day
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.]
This is a real thing in the world.
Vajazzling.
Vajazzling, about which Jennifer Love Hewitt evidently dedicates an entire chapter in her forthcoming book, entails "bedazzling your lady parts with stick-on Swarovski crystals." One intrepid blogger got vajazzled (for SCIENCE!) and the (NSFW-ish) results are here.
The portmanteau, if you haven't already discerned its sparkly etymology, comes from the mash-up of "vagina" (or her hipper cousin, "vajayjay") and "bedazzling." You remember the Bedazzler, don't you? "Don't be dull—be dazzling!"
Come on, ladies—you don't want dull ladybits, do you?!
As nearly everything else related to the typical female anatomy between the legs, the reference to the vagina is a misnomer—and thank Maude for that, because, apart from being the orificular equivalent of Willy Wonka's Tunnel, a jewel-encrusted vagina doesn't sound particular comfy or safe for anyone involved.
It's actually the pubic area that gets vajazzled, which is, let's face is, only a dubious improvement. "Scraping! Loose crystals! In your teeth! Stuck to a condom! Even…Maude help me…getting shoved up into your vulva and vagina!" exclaims BeckySharper. "What a phenomenally bad idea!"
Indeed so. But what a delightful treat for the gynecologist who treats your ensuing infection when zie peers beyond your labia and finds a glimmering geode.
[H/T to Shaker Kevin Baker, via email.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of the bestselling biography of Melissa McEwan, "Fat in the Hat."
Recommended Reading:
stephiepenguin: Asian Women Blog Carnival #5
Thea: Stories That Ally vs Stories That Appropriate: A Yardstick
Tami: I'm Not Your Girlfriend
Maureen: More Adventures in Olympic Racial Drag
Angry Asian Man: Queen Yu-Na
Andy: CA Law Still Requires Health Officials to Seek Cure for 'The Gay'
Bri: Fatty Defies Fat Health Stereotypes!
Leave your links in comments...
Today in Fat Hatin'
Its effects, as inevitable as they are depressing and frightening:
Half the six-year-old girls [in a British study] asked to pick their ideal body shape from a range of digitally altered images of themselves chose one that was three sizes smaller than the real image – the slimmest option they could choose.These are the girls who turn into the 54% of women who would rather be hit by a truck than be fat.
Many of the girls questioned in the study, by Cambridge University, said they thought being skinnier would make them more popular.
...[The mother of six-year-old Saffron Davis, who opted for the thinnest image] told The Sun: "Saffron looks through my magazines and says her legs are fat. There is a worrying culture of girls thinking they're overweight from a very young age."
Last week it was reported that five-year-old Lucy Davis, 3st 9lbs, had been classed as "unhealthily fat" by NHS doctors in Poole, Dorset because she was one per cent over her ideal Body Mass Index.
I am reminded, once again, that one of the most devastating consequences of not including a spectrum of fat women in our media, of showing instead their headless bodies as grim warnings and using tragic tales of (some) fat women's sad lives as cautionary tales, is that little girls don't grow up in a culture where there exist stories of happy (and happy-go-lucky) fat women.
Yesterday, I saw this picture of Gabby Sidibe in USA Today:
And I grinned. And tears sprung to my eyes to see such a beautiful, sexy, happy, fat woman, in a place where we are never seen. Her body looks like mine, or mine like hers: The belly rolls, the oversized upper arms, the double chin. And I never, ever, get to see a body that looks like mine attached to a happy face, in the mainstream media.
But we exist, we happy fat women. We live good lives, we work and eat and fuck and maybe have kids or maybe not; we fall in love, we get zits, we go to costume parties, we hang out with Deeky, we hang out with Spudsy (who occasionally masquerades as the Hoff when he doesn't want his picture posted), we flip off Jay Leno, we go on holiday, we get new specs, we give Mona Lisa smiles. And we wear hats.
We exist. And goddamn the world for pretending we don't, so that little girls think the worst thing they could ever be is like us.
Being me ain't so bad.
And it's not like I care whether anyone actively wants to be like me when she grows up; I do, however, care a lot that there are little girls whose greatest fear is being like me because they see it as a fate worse than death. And the reason I care about that is because some of them are going to look like me, whether they want to or not—and some of them are going to die trying to avoid that fate.
A fate with which I'm content.
[H/T to Shaker lelumarie.]
In Things Dr. Seuss Would Rather You Didn't Remember
Little known fact: During WWII, Dr. Seuss did his patriotic duty cartooning propaganda for the War Dept. and pencilling political cartoons for the tabloid PM. Really. Seuss's trademark whimsy runs headlong into racist demonization of the enemy. It's as unsettling as it is fascinating.
Just check out this drawing imploring citizens to buy savings bonds: A caged Seussian rhino, replete with Hitlerstache and totally swastikafied, is held captive by a smiling bald eagle in Uncle Sam garb.
Or this little number: A cutesy Josef Stalin (maybe a first) holds up a platter of stuffed, Nazi pig, captioned "They're serving roast Adolf at Joe's house tonight!"
And for added irony: A pile of wood labeled "War Work To Be Done" is emblazoned with a sign "No Colored Labor Needed," as two African American men look on, appearing somewhat gobsmacked. Racism is a bad thing, Seuss says here (see also The Sneetches). Except when Othering the enemy (see image above).
Like I said, unsettling, fascinating. More here.
[Cross-posted. And thanks to my pal Will for passing this along.]
Bi-Monthly Reminder & Thank You
This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder* to donate to Shakesville—although I haven't actually done one of these since November, because I wanted to get the blog working again first.
Asking for donations is difficult for me, partly because I've got an innate aversion to asking for anything, and partly because these threads are frequently critical and stressful. But it's also one of the most feminist acts I do here.
So. Here's the reminder.
You can donate once by clicking the button in the righthand sidebar, or set up a monthly subscription here.
Please don't feel obliged to donate, especially if money is tight. The last thing I want is for anyone to feel stretched because of a donation.
I also want say thank you, so very much, to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am profoundly grateful—and I don't take a single cent for granted. I've not the words to express the depth of my appreciation, besides these: This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.
(Why I ask for donations is explained here.)
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* I know there are people who resent these reminders, but there are also people who appreciate them, so I've now taken to doing them every other month, in the hopes that will make a good compromise.
France to "Tag" Violent Husbands
[Trigger warning.]
The BBC reports that the French Parliament is considering, and is likely to pass, a new law that would require men who have been court-ordered to stay away from their partners to wear an electronic tag that would alert police if they break the order and get too close to their partners.
My immediate response was essentially a slew of questions about the specifics: What is the threshold for getting a court-order in France—is it easy or difficult? Is is only applicable for married, opposite-sex couples? Does the abused partner have to wear a tag, too, in order for the abuser's tag to know he's getting too close, or does it only work as long as the abused partner stays in her home? How long does the tag stay on—forever? Or is it a temporary thing, like an ankle bracelet worn by someone under house arrest? If it's finite, who determines—and how—when it's safe to remove the tag because its bearer no longer poses a significant threat?
But all of those details aside, there has to be a pretty compelling case for me to support a new kind of human tracking by a government. Which makes this the only truly relevant question: Have these "tags" been shown to have any kind of observable deterrent effect?
Because if they have, if violent men who are tagged by court-order are demonstrably less likely to attack and/or murder their spouses ("three women are being killed by their partners every week" in France), then that's a pretty compelling reason.
But if they haven't, then all we're talking about is something to make the job of police and prosecutors easier, because they get "alerted" when a tagged abuser breaks a court-order to kill his wife.
Which ultimately doesn't help abused women at all.
And doing something just to feel like you're doing something, instead of doing something to materially and practically help victims of domestic violence, can be worse than doing nothing at all, because it gives everyone an excuse to avoid doing something genuinely effective for even longer.
[H/T to Memeorandum.]
Big Bipartisan Healthcare Summit Review
So yesterday was the Big Bipartisan Healthcare Summit, and my colleague at CifA, Sahil Kapur, perfectly sums up the event: "Thursday's much-hyped bipartisan healthcare summit was a predictably fruitless political showcase. Republicans knew coming into it they wouldn't reverse a year of frenzied opposition to healthcare reform under any circumstances, and Democrats knew the prospect of GOP co-operation was laughable on its face. That's how it began, and that's how it ended."
I keep reading over and over this morning that this was the final straw, and now Obama and the Democratic leadership will forge on without regard for the Republicans: "Obama listened politely for six hours, with occasional flashes of temper, but in the end, the message was clear: It's over. We're moving forward without Republicans," writes Greg Sargent.
And Steve Benen notes: "In effect, yesterday was about both sides asking the other a fundamental question. Obama's question for Republicans was, 'We're offering a bipartisan, comprehensive package built around principles you claim to support. Are you willing to work with us?' Republicans came with their own question: 'Will you throw out all the work you've done and promise to let us kill reform with a filibuster?' Both sides have the same answer to the competing questions: 'No.' The difference is, Democrats are the governing majority, and the party's leaders see no reason to make Republican satisfaction a prerequisite for success."
This is no knock on either one of those fine writers, whose observations are absolutely right, but I am left wondering, yet again, what was the goddamn point of wasting an entire year—not to mention enormous amounts of political capital, progressive goodwill, and, quite literally, thousands of American lives—to come to the conclusion that healthcare reform will just have to move ahead without the help of the Republicans, who indicated from DAY FUCKING ONE that they were going to offer naught but obdurate obstructionism?
I guess I finally understand the objective of 12-dimensional chess: To end up with the board looking exactly the same as when you started, but sitting across from a stronger opponent.
Paul Krugman: "So what did we learn from the summit? What I took away was the arrogance that the success of things like the death-panel smear has obviously engendered in Republican politicians. At this point they obviously believe that they can blandly make utterly misleading assertions, saying things that can be easily refuted, and pay no price. And they may well be right."
Digby, looking at the media response, finds, naturally, that they are right. The media is declaring the GOP the victor. Digby notes that CNN analyst David Gergen proclaimed, I shit you not: "Intellectually, the Republicans had the best day they've had in years. The best day they've had in years."
And check out this typical headline from that liberal media outlet CBS: "The Summit Was a Tie—and That's Good News for GOP." Even when the Republicans tie, they win!
And all they needed to do to "tie" apparently was not completely lose it and start flinging their own shit at the president like caged monkeys, because they sure didn't win on facts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the occasion of the summit to scold his Republican colleagues: "You're entitled to your opinions, but not your own facts. Your opinion is something that is yours and you're entitled to that, but not your own facts."
But the truth is, they are entitled to their own facts, because the media lets them say whatever the fuck they want and, as long as they look confident saying it, declare them the winners.
This is a narrative that media watchdogs like Eric Boehlert and Bob Somerby have been documenting for years. And yet President Obama and the Democratic leadership are so arrogant or daft or delusional that they evidently believed it will be different for us!
I cannot begin to convey the depth of my contempt for this administration's patent refusal to surrender its belief that the game can be changed by foolishly pretending that the rules simply don't apply to them.
People have died in the last year because they didn't have health coverage, while Obama & Co. fucked around trying to win an ideological battle that they were never. going. to. win.
Me, almost a year ago: "The Democrats should concede nothing to the altar of bipartisanship and corporatism. They can water down legislation until it's not remotely progressive and unlikely to even be effective, but it still won't be enough for the right-leaning interests in this country to do anything but try to kill it and kill it and kill it, and anything resembling it, until they get what they want. And what they want isn't good for the American people. Which is why they should be roundly ignored."
I've said what feels like a hundred times in the last year that any attempt to compromise with the GOP is utter folly, because you can't negotiate with someone whose position is "No." And I resent bitterly that this administration's insistence on ignoring something so patently obvious, in pursuit of indulgent and ultimately vain political gamesmanship, has ended up where we are today, in the same place we started, but with countless people sicker than they had to be, broker than they had to be, or dead, when they didn't have to be.
In other news that makes me want to smash things...
The public option never even got a mention at the summit, which doesn't mean there aren't still the few, the proud, the authentic progressives in both houses of Congress who are still valiantly fighting for it:
The Senate has the 50 votes necessary to pass a public health insurance option using the budget reconciliation process, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Thursday.
I'm with you, Bernie. Perplexed and pissed and still hoping, despite all evidence of its futility, for something good to come out of this huge, stinking, disgusting mess.
Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist" who supports the government-run plan, urged President Barack Obama to push for the public option even though the possibility of passing it appeared to die this week.
"I think we do have 50 votes in the Senate for a public option and frankly I don't know why the president has not put it in and I hope that we can inject it," Sanders said on MSNBC. "I think it's a very important part of healthcare reform."
Open Thread
Hosted by Jimmy, H.R. Pufnstuf, Cling, Clang, and a gravestone so fucking cool it's making me rethink cremation, if I can get a duplicate made.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker The_Great_Indoors: What's something you're proud of? No real restrictions on this; could be recent or years past, public or private, and not necessarily a teaspoon item—just a small space to brag up something.
With All Due Respect
Every email I get that begins, "With all due respect," is followed immediately thereafter by a barrage of seething, hyperbolic vitriol. Usually several paragraphs of it.
One might reasonably argue that my correspondents are being ironic, implicitly commenting that I am due no respect at all by showing me none.
But one then wonders why it is they take the time to hector, lecture, berate, condemn, and attempt to persuade me of my principles with compelling arguments like "Your a fat stupid cunt anyways!"
Hmm. Well. There is a fine line between respect and fear.
What a pitiable existence it must be, quivering at the keyboard and pounding out vicious missives to perfect strangers, scared of the mere knowledge there are people in the world who are different than you and not inclined to accept that those differences make them less than. How sad to be threatened by anyone whom the strategies of the high school bully fail to silence.
Insight isn't the only thing that undiluted privilege doesn't freely give its members; it also robs them of an internal, dignified security that isn't predicated on treating rights as a zero-sum game. Every layer of privilege serves as proxy for the self-assurance hard-won by struggling to be proud despite one's marginalization. Privilege tells its members they need not reflect, or justify, or earn, or question. They needn't even bother themselves with the business of being good, because unexamined privilege assures them they are good, by virtue of their privilege.
But who are they, if that privilege comes undone? Are they good? Are they smart, strong, deserving? They've never had to find out—and thus the insecurity, the desperate lashing out at anyone who threatens, in even the most meager way, to topple the tower of unexamined privilege atop which they stand. Their pride was unearned, and they're left with a cavernous void of self-esteem if that tower crumbles beneath their feet.
They are nothing without their privilege, because their privilege has allowed them to live a life never having to be anything, other than privileged.
So they flail, urgently and frantically, in my inbox, because it's easier to impotently shout at me than to even begin to contemplate the vast fuckery that is having been robbed of the will and need to know themselves, coerced into complacency by the damnable illusion that they have everything already that they will ever need, and need never expect more of themselves.
With all due respect, my friends: You've been hoodwinked.
Multi-language Feminist Links?
I think I may have mentioned once or twice that I'm a translator by vocation (and to an extent by avocation too), specifically of French, German and Russian (I also read some Spanish and Japanese, but not well enough to work in them).
One of the ways I keep my skills up is to read every day in my languages, various news sources online: Le Monde, Suddeutsche Zeitung, NTV.ru, and El Pais are on my daily list.
It occurred to me today, while reading yet another kyriarchal paean from one of them, that it'd be really interesting to hook into communities of feminists speaking languages other than English. Quickest way to accomplish something like that, I figure, is ask a Shaker.
So this is me asking: You Shakers who speak/read languages other than English: what's your favourite $LANG_ADJ feminist site? What fauxgressive $LANG_ADJ sites should be avoided, in your opinion? Leave your links below.
And please don't worry, those who come here to post from off-site feminist places whose native language isn't English: since I'm proposing to unleash a small horde of second-language learners on your sites, please don't fear that your (if it is!) imperfect English will be unwelcome here. If you need or want to post in a non-English language, let us worry about finding a translator - I'm explicitly inviting comments in not-English.
What's "teaspoon" in Arabic, anyway? Anyone know? :)
Hudson Taylor, Ally
Shaker BrianWS emails:
How awesome is this?! Offered with no comment besides that. Oh, and a blub or seven.I've got nothing to add. Just go read.
"My eyes are just a little sweaty today."
Jack's not crying.
[Paraphrase: Scenes of Jack from Lost, totes crying plentiful jears, set to the Flight of the Conchords' "I'm Not Crying," the lyrics for which can be found here.]
Thanks to Shaker alabee for passing that along under the subject line "FOTC + Jears: Need I say more?", and also aptly noting that, aside from being funny, "It's also a pretty awesome dissection of rigid conceptions of what's properly 'masculine'."
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.]
