Shakesville

Today in Fat Hatin'

Are you fucking kidding me, Reuters?

Are you kidding me with that absurd headline? "Do the obese really deserve contempt?" Seriously?!

Are you kidding me with the article ostensibly about etiquette for dealing with fat people, topped by a picture of a dehumanized headless fatty?!

Are you kidding me with the talking about fat people like we're goddamned aliens from another galaxy, or zoo animals, or some other organic curiosity that must be talked about because surely none of us could effectively communicate ideas about how to treat fat people with dignity?

Are you kidding me with your absolutely laughable list of etiquette rules, which are positively littered with offensive assumptions about fat people?

Are you kidding me with this shit?

They can spot the disapproval and immediate dismissal of those who interview them for jobs (assuming they have the temerity to show up for an interview)

Yes, People of Planet Earth, it's true: Fat people have special echolocation nodes in their subcutaneous fat that heightens their emotional awareness during job interviews. (Also true: I know at least one fat person who knows that "temerity" is not a synonym for "courage," and that the quoted parenthetical actually implies that fat people are uppity for thinking they deserve a job.)

No, really. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

Be wary of activities that require a lot of walking or standing. You would do the same for anyone with a walker or wheelchair.

Well, it is true that planning activities for someone in a wheelchair that requires a lot of walking and standing is a bad idea. OMGWTFLOL.

Epic fail, Reuters. Epic. Fucking. Fail.

Contact Reuters.

[Via Anna North.]

This is a real thing in the world.

[Click to embiggen.]
"Sizing Up Sperm: Each of us was the grand prize in an ultimate reality competition, the amazing race a sperm makes on the road to fertilization. Millions of sperm compete while overcoming armies of antibodies, treacherous terrain and impossible odds to reach their single-minded goal. To illustrate the full weight of the challenge, Sizing Up Sperm uses real people to represent 250 million sperm on their marathon quest to be first to reach a single egg." Care of the National Geographic Channel, or NatGeo for you hipsters out there.

I was just thinking recently how I loved flipping through the channels and having my choice of literally countless stories about the epic journeys of straight white dudez constantly at my fingertips, but it would be supercool if I could watch something about the marathon quest of sperm.

IN HUMAN SCALE!!!1!!11!!eleventy!

The hat tip goes to Shaker CjR, who notes via email: "And from what I've already seen of the ads, it's a 'oooh, look at the big strong manly sperm overcoming obstacles to thrust themselves upon a poor innocent ovum' bull." Indeed so. And, lest anyone think I'm just inexplicably averse to SCIENCE!, it's not that I have a problem with a show about the life of sperm; it's that I have a problem with the way this particular show is being marketed. The framing is reminiscent of how Tales of Important Straight Cis Able-Bodied White Men are told, and thus it's not surprising that the marketing is crap.

And the particular way it's crap—reminiscent of how Tales of Important Privileged Men are told—is not a bug, but a feature. It's no accident the human sperm-avatars look like they should be holding a fucking flag to stick into the ominous egg, once they've conquered it.

Daily Kitteh

Ms. Olivia Twist

Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"

Background. (This was an actual conversation Deeks and I had yesterday...)

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.]

Salad vs. Big Mac

Via Economix; created by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
If you can't view the image, it's a graphic labeled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" featuring two pyramids. The one on the left is labeled "Federal Subsidies for Food Production, 1995-2005," and it shows the breakdown by food type of US Government Subsidies: 73.8% Meat/Dairy, 13.23% Grains, 10.69% Sugar, Oil, Starch, and Alcohol, 1.91% Nuts/Legumes, and 0.37% Fruits/Vegetables. The one of the right is labeled "Federal Nutrition Recommendations," and it shows the breakdown by food type of US Government Nutritional Guidelines: 11 servings of grains, 9 servings of fruits/vegetables, 6 servings of protein (meat, dairy, nuts, and legumes), and sugar, oil, and salt are to be "used sparingly."

The reality is that US government subsidies are almost the precise opposite of its nutritional recommendations.

The result is that shitty food is cheap. And affordable, available, easily accessible food is way more likely to be shitty food. And derivatives of highly-subsidized foods get stuck into everything, like high-fructose corn syrup, irrespective of their nutritional value.

[H/T to Shaker Naznarreb.]

Things of which I Am Tired

Number One: Racially-charged/racist incidents on/around campuses, period. See:

A) UCSD reacts to racial incidents

This began with the "Compton Cookout" party for which hosts "invited students to dress and act in a way that encouraged racial stereotypes, mocking Black History Month." Text of the invitation here, but it included helpful details like:

For guys: I expect all males to be rockin Jersey's, stuntin' up in ya White T (XXXL smallest size acceptable), anything FUBU, Ecko, Rockawear, High/low top Jordans or Dunks, Chains, Jorts, stunner shades, 59 50 hats, Tats, etc.

For girls: For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks-Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes... They also have short, nappy hair, and usually wear cheap weave... They... speak very loudly, while rolling their neck, and waving their finger in your face.

When overly-sensitive, politically correct, free speech stifling people [/snark] objected, a campus group called KOALA defended the party on the university's television station, and "one student used the 'N-word' to describe critics of the Cookout."

The university then held a teach-in, but students walked out, feeling that the method was ineffective for addressing or healing the problem or underlying issues like the dearth of black faculty or students.

Then, a student strung up a noose in the campus library. Students, again, demanded that campus officials effectively and actively address the incident.

Let's see what happens.

B) 2 MU students apologize for cotton ball incident The "incident" involved the students "scattering cotton balls outside the black culture center at the University of Missouri in Columbia."

C) A Towson University adjunct, Allen Zaruba, was fired for describing himself, in front of his class, as "a nigger on the corporate plantation."

Number Two: The disavowal of racist intent.

The noose-hanger says she had no racist motivation.

The two students at the University of Missouri in Columbia described their actions as "part of a series of foolish acts."

Zaruba pointed out that he serves in a prison ministry and that his stepfather was black. ("One of my best friends..."). I resent the fact that he fell back on that trope.

I just have more respect for people who own their shit. In what other context do the first two incidents make sense? Black people protest disrespect, lack of representation and support, and systemic racism, and a noose is hung? That's not even original. Cotton balls outside the BLACK CULTURE CENTER?!

Number Three: How quickly the comments on any post on any of these incidents turn to "This is PC gone mad/this is unfair because white people can't say/do what black people say/do!!!/Is this really a racist incident?" etc. Even in the f*cking Chronicle of Higher Education comments!

Really? Are those the primary issues? That some black people say the n-word or called someone cracker, so we must never protest incidents like these? That it's unfair that *everyone* can't bandy around the word "nigger?" Do you want to? Because if you do, I'm sure you already are.

I just want to fire off a snarky letter that begins with, "I am so sorry that our desire to work and study in less racially hostile environments inconveniences you!"

And to all my academic colleagues defending Zaruba on the basis of the "appropriateness" of his comparison:

Adjuncts are overworked and underpaid with little job security. The circumstances under which many work are appalling and I know that I'm fortunate to be on the tenure track.

But I can pretty much guarantee that being an adjunct is markedly different from being "a nigger on a plantation." For some reason, I'm certain of that.

I am reminded of the exasperation my colleague, an Africanist, feels when people say they are "working like a slave." Few of us can even imagine the reality (and horror) of that.

Quote of the Day

"I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica." — Rush Limbaugh, on his future in the U.S. if health care reform becomes a reality.

Crazy Bromains 2: This Time It's Personal.

by Shaker NapalmNacey

Remember that ad? You know the one. It had Pamela Anderson and that gorgeous brunette secretary pouring cream/milk all over each other while dressed in nothing but skimpy gold string bikinis. What were they advertising again? Oh that's right – domain names. Those two things are totally related to each other.

I remember the night I saw that advertisement for the first time. It was Christmas, I was tired and bored and kicking back with my family, watching some trash TV cause that's all that was on and we'd watched all our videos. I mentioned it in a livejournal entry.

Yeah, my language was pretty strong, but I had every right to communicate that way. It's ostensibly a private journal (though nothing is truly secret on the internet) and I wanted to network with my feminist friends, looking for ideas how to legally and effectively protest against that horrendous commercial. I was not going to take this crap in a prone position.

I posted on my LJ. I talked to both Liss and Lauredhel (from Hoyden About Town). I looked online at various agencies and finally sent an angry letter to the Advertising Standards Bureau here in Australia. I went to what I thought was the YouTube channel of the company that made the ad in the first place and let them know that I was going to do my utmost to get their crappy ad off the air. In the spirit of total honesty, I got very angry and said that I hoped that the company lost money on the ad. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

After writing the letter, my personal life demanded my undivided attention. I'd done what I could about the ad and I figured after an awesome post by CaitieCat and one by Lauredhel over at Hoyden, this thing had played out.

Oh, how wrong I was.

About a month later I was told that the ad had been banned. News articles reported on this ban, and I did a little jig. Finally, finally, my letter-writing and shaking of fists had paid off! It was a victory for progressive folk everywhere! The ASB very rarely takes action on things such as this, and so quickly. I was both stunned and heartened.

Then I read an article where Gavin Collins, the head of the Crazy Bromains company, was vocally blaming "feminist bloggers". He went on morning chat shows to paint them in a most negative light. I chuckled and watered my evil Feminist cactii with his bro-tears, stroking my evil cat and going "Mwa-ha-ha-ha" a lot, while counting FemCo's huge piles of misandry-generated cash.

Okay, what really happened was that I laughed and then got distracted with life again. Apparently the company was appealing the decision, but this didn't bother me because they had such a weak case. I thought that was the end, I really did.

Then cue forward to about four days ago. A random LJ user commented on my original post about the advertisement, asking me if I had ever gotten around to actually sending a letter in and complaining. Why yes, I did. Well, it seemed that I had been linked to by Mr. Crazy Bromains himself, Gavin Collins.

I checked out the PDF of the case study. And low and behold, there's a link to my journal, to the very first entry I did about this whole debacle. Says the company:

We are further instructed by our client that the complaints were launched maliciously by a group of persons with vested interests. We refer the Board to the following link - http://logansrogue.livejournal.com/1327524.html - which will corroborate our client’s allegation that their advertisement has been the subject of discontent for the feminist bloggers on the said site. We are sure the Board will note that the bloggers on this site do not represent the majority of society who are reasonably minded and less sensitive to an advertisement with a tongue in cheek approach.

Yeah, that's directly copied and pasted. I am, apparently, a group with a vested interest. Little old me. Was I malicious? Yeah, maybe when I was really angry. I tend to get a little She-Hulk when my basic human rights are flouted for advertising cheap domain names. But vested interests? Really? I quote my latest journal entry:

...I'd like to come out and make it totally clear to the ASB (and may I point out that the the thought of them looking at my journal is truly gobsmacking) that I am not a part of any particular interest group. Not a coherent one with a membership drive and aims and all that crap.

I'm merely a feminist, an angry feminist with a blog and a LOT of feminist friends that dislike being objectified as much as I do.

What happened with the Crazy Bromains ad was not an orchestrated attack against the advertisers. It was a bunch of women getting really fucking pissed off and complaining. That's what happens when you try that 70s shit these days. Well, it's what SHOULD happen but there's a backlash going on, don't you know. So I'm deeply satisfied by the results of this case study.

Yes, Crazy Bromains. I got mad, I wrote letters. People can do that in this country (Australia), that's why there's an ASB in the first place. What I was doing was making an effort to defend my rights as a human being. If that upsets you or offends you, I can't help that. If that means you're going to make shit up about me, well - go for it. All anyone has to do is talk to me to know that I'm a stone-cold broke unemployed disabled feminist artist with a lot of time on my hands. I have no money piles to look out for. And if there are money piles, I really doubt that half-penny web business like Crazy Bromains is really much of a threat."

So – a woman speaks out and is summarily attacked and had her character maligned by a bunch of douchewads jealously protecting their hip-pockets. Yay Kyriarchy!!

For bonus LOLs, load up the PDF and read some of the grand intellectualising and mansplaining of exactly why the commercial wasn't sexist. My favourite bit:

Adam the male member at the meeting in the advertisement is depicted as male colleague fantasising about his two female colleague’s and in order to portray his fantasy, the scenes of Pamela Anderson and the other female colleague are depicted performing pseudo-sexual movements and having milk or a whitish liquid poured over them, to show Adam’s mind drifting while the rest of the members of the meeting are trying hard to come up with a name for the new services provided by the company.

Yet when Adam is asked about what would an ideal name be for the provision of the services, Adam replies “crazy domains dot com dot au” which actually shows that even Adam knows that his fantasies about his female colleagues is outrageous and over the top, and as such “crazy” in the literal sense of the word. In our opinion members of the community would regard the storyline, style and tone of the advertisement to be light-hearted and pure fantasy. The intended message is that Crazy Domains are providing premium domain name services for fraction of the costs charged by other similar providers, which one would colloquially refer to as “First class services at a crazy price”.

So, you know, they admit it's pseudo-sexual. Thank for doing the hard work for me, Asshole Advertising Agency!

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Sparklehorse: "It's A Wonderful Life"

Mark Linkous, the 47-year-old singer-songwriter who recorded under the moniker Sparklehorse, died Saturday in Knoxville, Tennessee. Rest in peace.

Personal Note

Just a quick one: someone wrote me in response to my Bread&Teaspoons post about marketing for my business two weeks back, and I cannot find your e-mail anywhere. Could you please be so kind as to e-mail me again at cait@cogitantes.net?

(ETA: Got that first one sorted, thanks!)

Also, though B&T is usually Tuesdays, it'll be Wednesday this week because it was late last week. Hoping to start getting back on track as the winter closes out and the sun comes back again.

Congratulations, Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young!

Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young were the first same-sex couple to wed this morning in Washington, D.C.

A lesbian couple together for more than a decade smiled through tears Tuesday as they became the first same-sex couple to marry in the District of Columbia, on the first day such unions are legal in the nation's capital.

Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young said they had waited years to marry. They were first in line last week to apply for a marriage license at Washington's marriage bureau.

"You are my friend, my partner, my love," Young, 47, told Townsend, 41. "I will love you today, tomorrow and forever."

After the wedding, those present cheered as the two women embraced and cried. They have been together for 12 years and have children, according to biographical information released by the Human Rights Campaign and D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality.

...Also among the first couples to marry Tuesday were Reggie Stanley and Rocky Galloway, both 50. The couple have two daughters, Malena and Zoe Stanley-Galloway, each 15 months old, according to the biographical information released by the equality groups.

Also married on Tuesday were the Rev. Elder Darlene Garner, 61, and the Rev. Lorilyn Candy Holmes, 53, of Laurel, Maryland. Both of them serve in leadership roles in the Metropolitan Community Church. The women are mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, according to the groups.

Blub.

Opponents of same-sex marriage—those bigots with the desperate insecurity about their super-special relationships losing the shimmering, golden glow that only denying marriage equality to same-sex couples conveys upon their gloriously gilded unions—are still, yawn, making the argument that same-sex marriages will somehow, magically, undermine opposite-sex marriage. But my opposite-sex marriage does not feel undermined today. My opposite-sex marriage means more to me today, because the institution has become more inclusive—and by each little expansion of its borders does it become ever more about love.

Love is a concept that is largely absent from our modern debates about marriage equality—because, of course, the people who seek to deny marriage to same-sex couples lose ground when the emotions of the thing impose upon their clinical, passionless talking points about protecting an institution they'd happily return to little more than a property exchange between landowning men, given half a chance.

For a very long time, marriage between a man and a woman didn't have a lot to do with love. (In fact, in some cultures, it still doesn't.) One of the most remarkable things about our culture is that we have the freedom to marry for love, to forge lifelong bonds based not on class or race or religion or the number of goats our dads can spare, but on a feeling so beautiful that poets have spent lifetimes trying to lay it on a page, that artists have passionately sought its capture in one still but enduring moment. Operas and books and films and pop songs, so heartbreakingly lovely that they can steal one's breath, if just for a moment, have been written by people in the thralls of love, or the searing pain of its loss. Monuments have been built, wars have been fought, and some of the greatest happiness ever experienced by humankind has been born because of love.

We are blessed with the luxury of love, and, make no mistake, it is a luxury. Marriage at its best is an expression of love. When it's simply an institution to facilitate the continued existence of a society through the birth of new generations, it is a splendid functional legal contract and nothing more. When it's a sign of commitment forged out of love, it is something ever so much grander. It is the stuff of legend.

Aristophanes said, in Plato's Symposium, that humankind, "judging by their neglect of it, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood it they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in its honor." He then laid out the most beautiful explanation of the origin of love I have ever read, just a piece of which I will excerpt here (having updated the translations with gender-neutral language):

[T]he original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost… In the second place, the primeval human was round, hir back and sides forming a circle; and ze had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. Ze could walk upright as humans now do, backwards or forwards as ze pleased, and ze could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on hir four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when ze wanted to run fast.

The gods were scared of humans in this powerful state, and Zeus conspired to diminish their strength by striking each of them in two with a lightning bolt.

He spoke and cut humans in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in order that the human might contemplate the section of hirself: ze would thus learn a lesson of humility… After the division the two parts of humanity, each desiring hir other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them, being the sections of entire men or women, and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of humankind.

That isn't about marriage. It's not about being straight or gay, either. It's about feeling such a desperate need to be close to another person(s) that you are certain the two (or more) of you were once torn asunder. It's about love. And that is neither the sole province of unions between one man and one woman, nor a luxury we should ever take for granted. It is a luxury so precious that denying of some people any and every expression of its unique and awesome qualities, treating their love as different, as less, is an affront to the tremendous gift we have been given in our capacity to feel love.

If we really understood love, we would not just build in its honor noble temples and altars, and offer solemn sacrifices, but would believe without reservation that to deny its existence in every human heart is to reject our humanity.

Congratulations, Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young. And all the other couples being married in D.C. today, who couldn't get married yesterday.

I Write Letters

Dear Stanley Fish,

No. No to the hell to the no. No, no, no. I mean it. Really. No way. No how. Hell no.

"No no no no no no no no no no no no no no."
No. Nope. Nuh-uh. Nah. No the no^th power. www.no.com. Not even the tiniest, infinitesimal, unfathomable modicum. Nopey nopey nope. Negatory. Nein. Nyet. Non. Nei. Naheen. Hell fuckin' no.

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
Love,
Liss

P.S. No.

A Big-Ass Teaspoon in India

Indian upper house passes women's quota bill:

The upper house of India's parliament has approved a bill to reserve a third of all seats in the national parliament and state legislatures for women.

The bill was passed with 186 members of the 245-seat house voting in favour. Only one member voted against. Several smaller parties boycotted the vote. The bill was introduced on Monday amid uproar from opponents, resulting in the suspension of seven MPs on Tuesday. First proposed in 1996, the bill now has support from India's main parties.

At present women make up just 10% of the lower house (Lok Sabha) of parliament, and significantly fewer in state assemblies.

Sonia Gandhi, Congress party president, has said she attaches the "highest importance" to the proposals and passing them would be a "gift to the women of India".

..."The bill is a historic and giant step towards empowering women and a celebration of their rights," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha.

"Women are facing discrimination at home, there is domestic violence, unequal access to health and education. This has to end," he said.

Communist leader Brinda Karat said it would change the "culture of the country because women today are still caught in a culture prison. In the name of tradition, stereotypes are imposed and we have to fight these every day."

Blub.

Opponents of the bill tore up copies in protest, sloganeered, shredded papers taken from Vice President Hamid Ansari's table and threw the scraps at him, and generally caused juvenile disarray. Seven MPs were suspended for disorderly behavior, and subsequently had to be forcibly removed from the chamber when they refused to leave.

Only in a world governed by the most absurd, deeply-entrenched misogyny would there be rioting over requiring one-third of a government to be held by one-half the population.

[H/T to Shaker GimliGirl.]

Open Thread

Hosted by Kali.

Question of the Day

We've done this one before, but not for almost a year, and it's always fun... How did you find Shakesville? (Or, if you're a long-time Shaker, Shakespeare's Sister.)

Space Cowboy's got a wonderful and very detailed answer to this one, btw. He even remembers the exact post that brought him here, via a link at Crooks & Liars!

Since I can't really give an answer to this question, I'll instead just say thanks for being here, and I'm glad you found your way.

Hungry?

Benry would like to offer you some delicious ham!
(Thanks to Shaker stakkalee for passing on that gif! Previously in Random Benry.)

Polonius Had His Number

A follow-up on this story from last week:

The family-values California Republican legislator who was reported to have been at a gay club on the night last week that he was arrested for drunk driving has acknowledged he is gay.

"I'm gay," State Senator Roy Ashburn told a radio host from his central California district in an interview this morning. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long."

Ashburn, a divorced father of four, said that his many votes against gay rights were efforts to represent the conservative views of his constituents.

Good for him on the admission. As for his reason for voting against gay rights -- "I'm thinking of my constituents" -- well, to thine own self be true.

I've never bought the argument that an elected representative is merely a conduit for his or her constituency, and it's a cop-out to throw up your hands and say, "Hey, I'm just doing what I'm told." An elected representative has an obligation to use their judgment and insight to both their constituency and themselves as well as knowing what's best for the greater good of both their district and the country at large. Besides, being gay is apolitical: obviously conservatives as well as liberals are members of the LGBTQI community, and I daresay that he represents a fair number in his nice little Southern California Pleasantville.

I can understand all too well his inability to face the truth: it's not easy to come out of the closet at any age because of the social stigma placed on being openly gay, especially when it's reinforced by elected officials who engage in gay-bashing to assuage their own self-loathing and for electoral gain. Admitting it to yourself and the people who care is the first step. And if he's going to be truly honest with his constituents and his family, he has some apologies to make; not for being gay, but for his lack of honesty to them and to himself.

Crossposted.

Angie Jackson on CNN

Angie Jackson, the blogger who chronicled her abortion via Twitter and YouTube, was on CNN today, talking with anchor Kyra Phillips about her awareness-raising project. Angie was awesome; I love how she seamlessly worked in a plug for I'm Not Sorry. Kyra was weird and judgmental, if significantly less weird and judgmental than, say, that douchebag Rick Sanchez would have been—although I wonder how much weirder and more judgmental she might have been if Angie's primary reason for getting an abortion was, simply, "I don't want a kid right now."

Anyway, here's the video, and a full transcript is below. Enjoy.

Angie Jackson, on YouTube video clip: 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.

Kyra Phillips, in studio: So what motivated Angie to end her pregnancy? She says she used an IUD for birth control, but it failed. She also said that her pregnancy nearly killed her and her doctor told her not to have another child. So the 27-year-old Florida woman took the abortion pill RU-486, putting this private information out there for everyone to see. And it's gotten a lot of reaction. Positive, negative, even threatening. So why tweet about it? Angie joins me now live from Tampa. So, Angie, did it take a while to come to a comfort zone that you wanted to do this? Tell me how you eventually decided: "This is how I'm going to do it and I'm going to let everybody see it happen."

Jackson, via satellite: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm a blogger, and I'm actually writing a book "Birth and Death: Life of a Newborn Cult" about my experiences. And a talk about a lot of controversial or hot button issues every day. So for me this wasn't even that different. This was just an extension of continuing to talk openly about taboo subjects in a way that just by sharing my own story allows other people to share theirs or to talk about how they feel.

Phillips: Let's go ahead and look at another chunk of that live tweeting that you did as you were having an abortion.

Jackson, on video: Yes, it had the potential for that embryo to become a fetus, to become a person. Hypothetically. It could have been a person that was made up of my boyfriend and my DNA. But it was more likely to kill me. And you're not going to shame me. You're not going to silence me. I do not feel sorry that I saved my life. I do not feel sorry that I stayed here for myself, for my boyfriend, for my kid that I've already got.

Phillips: What did your doctor say was going to happen to you if you tried to carry that child?

Jackson: Well, when I had my son, who is four now, I had a tremendously difficult pregnancy and 98-hour back labor. My doctors advised me to avoid becoming pregnant again, which is why I had an IUD inserted in my cervix. However, there is no 100% effective form of contraception, not even tubal ligation or vasectomy. And so I had prepared that, if I became pregnant anyway, I would have an abortion because the risks were too high for me to continue a pregnancy.

Phillips: As you well know, we've been looking at all the various comments, both negative and positive to what you did. And these are really harsh—but people wrote in and said—they called you all kinds of names from being a whore to someone who just couldn't keep her legs closed; they called you a baby killer. I mean, it's even hard for me to say these things because some of those, the e-mails and the responses were so brutal. How did that make you feel? Did that bother you? Did it make you think twice about what you did?

Jackson: Actually, if anything, it showed me more how important it is to talk about taboo things or to talk about personal things. About half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy before the age of 45. And one in three American women will have an abortion sometime during their childbearing years. And yet this is something we almost never talk about—or at least we talk about the political aspects, but not the individual women. Some of the heat that I've gotten has certainly showed me what the cost of that silence is, is that when a woman does want to discuss it, she's—uh, the reaction is quite strong.

Phillips: What would you do if you got pregnant again?

Jackson: Of course the goal is to avoid that. But I mean, my health conditions have not changed. And if I was pregnant again, I would, of course, have another abortion.

Phillips: Final question. What made you decide to do the RU-486? Is that something you discussed with your boyfriend? How quick did you make that decision? Why that route?

Jackson: Sure. I investigated—I looked at a couple of web sites, one of which is imnotsorry.net, which includes a lot of personal abortion stories. And I read how different women had felt. I thought that the RU-486 abortion pill at home would be a more natural and comfortable experience. I was also too early in my pregnancy to be eligible for a surgical abortion. I was only four weeks. And so RU-486 was the medically recommended choice.

Phillips: Angie Jackson, very interesting. It definitely caught our attention. I actually didn't believe that you actually did it until I saw it. And it's pretty fascinating, the reasons that you have for doing it. And we're going to follow the video and the continued responses that you've gotten. You've also received a lot of support for what you did as well to sort of demystify what it's like to have an abortion. Interesting. Angie Jackson, thanks for your time.

Jackson: Thank you so much for having me.

Daily Kitteh

Sophie spends most of her day perched atop my monitor—or trying to sit on my chest, shoulder, or head—but whenever I speak to someone on the phone, especially if I put it on speaker, she hops down and curls herself up next to the phone and flips on her back so I can rub her belly, or begins to preen herself, or does something else redonkulously cute. I took this picture one day last week while I was talking to Spudsy.

Quote of the Day

"I can foresee rampant violence in the military if macho men must share shower facilities, bunk beds in a submarine, or fox holes with sex-crazed gay males."—Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, on the potential implications of repealing the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, in a fundraising letter.

Fox Holes with Sex-Crazed Gay Males is totes my favorite Dink Flamingo production, btw.