Livs.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Just moments ago:
Deeky: Do I need to come over and Bedazzle™ your vajayjay?
Liss: Yes. :-(
Deeky: What color gemstones should I bring?
Liss: Blue to match my eyes.
Deeky: Not something girly like ... Oh ... I dunno ... Pink?
Liss: LOL!
Deeky: Because if there's one thing that's not feminine enough, it's the cooter.
Liss: LOL!
Deeky: I also have one of those beard trimmers, if'n you wanna go all heart-shaped with your pubes.
Liss: I would prefer my pubes to be trimmed into the shape of a penis. It's IRONIC!
Deeky: LOL! That's just because you have penis envy.
Liss: Penis envy schmenis schmenvy. "Mapplethorpe the fuck outta my ladybits" is #19 on my bucket list.
Feel the Homomentum!
Pennsylvania kills proposed constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage:
The latest effort to amend Pennsylvania's constitution to effectively ban same-sex marriage is stalling.Suck on that, bigots!
The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted narrowly Tuesday to table the measure defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The senators didn't utter a word of debate before or after gay-rights proponent Sen. Daylin Leach proposed to table the measure. The vote was 8-6.
The Rehabilitation of Mike Tyson
[Trigger warning.]
I know it's the Post, but still... From an article on Mike Tyson's upcoming reality show on Animal Planet:
Tyson served three years for rape in the mid-'90s and effectively ended his fight career two years later by biting Evander Holyfield during a bout. But he is now well on his way to remaking himself into a sensitive guy.Wow.
Of course, he's well on his way to remaking himself into something because of all the help he's gotten. Like a family-friendly network giving him his own show, after a sympathetic and well-received documentary was made with his cooperation, and the media sought his expertise on domestic violence, and he was offered a notable and well-marketed cameo in a huge film, and was asked to participate in a high-larious skit at the Teen Choice Awards.
Would that every rapist was so fortunate in his friends, eh?
To be clear, I'm all for giving people another chance. And being let out of prison is a second chance, which is why we don't impose a life sentence on everyone convicted of any crime. Tyson faced as many as 60 years in prison, actually got sentenced to 10, and only served 3. That's second chance enough, in my opinion.
I don't believe that people who have "paid their debts" are necessarily owed the same opportunities they had before. Giving Tyson a second chance doesn't axiomatically mean he deserves to be made rich and famous again—although that's certainly what our culture appears to believe.
If you're rich and famous, it appears you can be wicked enough to be sent to prison, but not so wicked as to be sent to the working class. I have a problem with that.
I also have a problem with the fact that the rehabilitation of Tyson's reputation is justified on the assumption that he was unfairly convicted.
Famous men who have been accused of and tried for rape is typically "He wasn't convicted!" (because they're usually not), and the acquittal is used to "prove" the accused is innocent of the charges. Such protests are rooted in the implicit promise that men who are convicted will be presumed guilty.
But, as we can see with Tyson, that's not true. Despite Tyson's being convicted and serving prison time, he's still not regarded as a rapist. "He was railroaded!" And so he deserves a big comeback. Yay!
I would say it's unbelievable, except for the fact that it's totally, frustratingly, rage-makingly believable.
Tyson was tried in Indiana and served his time in a state prison that's about 20 minutes from my house. I remember the trial. I remember how his accuser, Desiree Washington, was slut-shamed and called a liar and a gold digger and a whore. The description of the case in Wikipedia still tries to cast doubt on her story. She "claimed," rather than "testified." She "was forced to admit that on several occasions she had the opportunity to leave Tyson's hotel room, but chose not to do so." She had a "history of sexually leading men on."
Fury.
There isn't enough time in the world to pass to make me forget that.
Sensitive guy, my ass.
I'm angry at Tyson, but I am just as angry, if not even more so, at the people who have forgotten Washington, or who continue to cast aspersions on her reputation, in order that Tyson's may be rehabilitated. They are people who ignore he is not merely a convicted rapist, but a man who abused at least one spouse, and who seriously assaulted a man in a professional setting, when he bit off part of Holyfield's ear during a boxing match.
They are people who look at Tyson and have pity for him, rather than empathy for the multiple people he has hurt. Or who look at him and see someone exploitable: "Wouldn't it be funny to put that nutball Mike Tyson in our movie?!" No regard for the message that sends about the gravity of assault and rape.
And, ultimately, I'm angry at this whole fucking situation because I think if there is a chance for Tyson to be truly rehabilitated, into a person who will not hurt another person again—a reborn human, not just a reborn career—giving him back wealth and power and entitlement and privilege isn't part of that equation.
In fact, I deeply suspect those are the very things that fuel his monster.
Investigation Required
At least, that's my opinion. I imagine it'll be given all due consideration by the Vatican, which will either regretfully discover there isn't enough information for action, or will bury the incident in committees and crocodilic apologies (made of the same stuff as crocodile tears).
(Trigger warning - slightly graphic discussion of pedophilia below the Open Wide)
Shaker Bald Soprano sent me a link to this Suddeutsche Zeitung article, (South German Times, a large and reputable media source in Germany) which, yes, is in German.
In short, the allegation is that while serving as Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the early 80s, the current sitting Pope was part of a council which approved the transfer of a convicted pedophile priest from Essen into his bishopric to a new community-work position - in which position that priest reoffended.
There is testimony from a then-eleven-year-old chorister that he'd been forced to provide oral sex to the transferred priest. This is a separate allegation from that of the Regensburg choristers against the Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, this one being directly laid at the Pope's door, while he was the Archbishop of Munich. The Vicar-General of Munich took responsibility for the transfer, but this may well be seen as the "falling-on-the-sword" for the one who had overall responsibility for the spiritual and moral health of his congregation: the Archbishop himself.
Addressing a conference of German bishops on Friday, the Pope referred to the abuse scandal now blooming in Germany against the Catholic Church, saying he was deeply upset by the revelations, and fully supported the bishops in their actions (or as we might see it, inactions) in response.
Let's be clear here: this isn't the entire church. Many Catholic clergy serve with great dedication in many parts of the world where others don't give a damn: in Latin America and in Africa, particularly. And while I'd rather they did so without the indoctrination, it cannot be denied there are many great teaspoons lifted by Catholic clergy.
Unfortunately, the upper leadership of the church, the political people who end up in bishoprics and the Vatican - because let us not forget, the Vatican is a political state in the world, and has been for centuries - has shown itself to have the same reaction to distressing news as any other conventional power-holding group: delay the press, destroy evidence, dither fitfully, and finally deny absolutely.
These men - and yes, oddly*, they're all men, and just about every one white, who knew? - have become deeply corrupted by their power. They do a daily disservice to those literally hundreds of millions of faithful Catholics, to the untold thousands of dedicated clergy, and to the good name generated by their good works, by their inaction towards, and denial of, the systemic problem of child abuse by a part of the clergy.
If they want to restore that good name, they will need to take on the moral courage of a fellow they're supposed to have a good deal of respect for (I think his name started with J?), and deal with the problem head-on. Recognize there is some rot in their clergy, in their system, and clean it out, unstintingly.
Ironic, I think, that I will close this with the imprecation so often hurled at queer folk like myself by the church, in keeping us out of mainstream society:
Won't someone please think of the children?
* For some value of "oddly".
The Anti-Choice Whittling Strategy
I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's CifA about the new "miscarriage" bill in Utah, and how it's part of the anti-choice whittling strategy to render Roe a meaningless statute, to make the US a country in which abortion is technically legal but inaccessible for most women:
Legal abortion is only worth as much as the number of women who have reasonable and affordable and unencumbered access to it, and that number is dwindling: the National Abortion Federation reports that 88% of counties in the US have no identifiable abortion provider – a figure that rises to 97% in non-metropolitan areas.Read the whole thing here.
That's not merely an inconvenience – between travel expenses and time off work, especially when a 24-hour waiting period necessitates at least two days of one's time, the cost of securing an abortion can become an undue burden. It can put legal abortion out of a woman's reach.
That's what state legislatures like Utah's are hoping. And because even the most publicly mendacious anti-choice activists know that even criminalising abortion doesn't stop women from getting them, they know that merely restricting access to legal abortion isn't enough – a woman who doesn't want to be pregnant will find a way to not be pregnant.
Thus is their current strategy is to make legal abortion as inaccessible as possible and criminalise everything else. An abortion performed by someone other than a doctor is ergo illegal. An abortion performed on a minor without parental consent, or on an adult without state-mandated counselling and a 24-hour waiting period, is ergo illegal. An abortion late in the pregnancy is ergo illegal. Inducing a miscarriage is ergo illegal. Terminating a pregnancy by any other method than the one which has been most ruthlessly restricted – via piecemeal legislation and the defunding of clinics and the unfettered terrorising of abortion providers – is illegal.
In Utah, women still have a technical legal right to abortion, but very little means to exercise that right.
Healthcare Open Thread
I read the news today, oh boy...
House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it:
After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.Which is debatable. And it's certainly not something about which the Republicans were very concerned on the many occasions they've used the procedure themselves.
Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.
The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.
"It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."
Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi's plan would be unconstitutional.
That said, it's pretty obvious if the bill gets passed this way, its legitimacy is going to be questioned, fair or not, which is a fairly compelling disincentive against using it. Of course, getting healthcare reform passed is a fairly compelling incentive for using it. So.
Meanwhile, it just wouldn't be an important national political debate without some Republican somewhere throwing a totally inappropriate racist allegory into the mix:
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday used language that compared House Democrats' efforts to pass healthcare reform legislation to a Japanese kamikaze mission.Yeesh.
"Nancy Pelosi, I think, has got them all liquored up on sake and you know, they're making a suicide run here," Graham said on the Keven Cohen Show on WVOC radio in Columbia, S.C.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Spryte: Do you like or dislike your name? If you dislike it, what would you change it to? Is there a story behind your name?
I like my name, which is Greek for honey bee; it suits me. There's no real story behind my name, apart from the fact that it was difficult for two schoolteachers to decide on a name, because so many names they each liked had been ruined for the other by troublesome students. Melissa had the distinction of being a name they both liked and with which neither had negative associations.
Mama Shakes originally wanted to name me Amarantha. Papa Shakes talked her out of it. I wouldn't have minded.
It's Tough to Make John McCain Look Good...
...but his primary opponent, J.D. Hayworth, is sure giving it the old college try:
[Hayworth] declared that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage—because to do otherwise could lead to a man marrying a horse.You know, as hilariously absurd as this is on the one hand, evoking Rick Santorum blathering about man-on-dog sex, and Dan Henninger yammering about human-snake marriage, dehumanizations so preposterous that they are as silly as they are cruel, on the other hand, drawing an equivalence between same-sex partnerships between consenting adults, and bestiality, which is nonconsensual by definition, is a key narrative of the rape culture: Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality. Rape culture is privileging heterosexuality because ubiquitous imagery of two adults of the same-sex engaging in egalitarian partnerships without gender-based dominance and submission undermines (erroneous) biological rationales for the rape culture's existence.
"You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage—now get this—it defined marriage as simply, 'the establishment of intimacy,'" said Hayworth, during an appearance on a Florida radio show on Sunday. "Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don't mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point—I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse. It's just the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal marriage amendment that I support."
Not so amusing, that.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Deeky: There is a "Women of Ninja Warrior" marathon on. Guess the dominant color in the promos.
Liss: Pinkity-pink-pink!
Deeky: You must be psychic!
Liss: I have a psychic vagina!
Deeky: LOL! That would make a good movie.
Liss: Psychic Vagina vs. Megashark!
Deeky: LOL for real.
Liss: Psychic Vagina Takes Manhattan!
Deeky: Psychic Vagina 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Liss: To Wong Foo, Thanks 4 Everything, Psychic Vagina.
Deeky: Psychic Vagina Reloaded.
Liss: P.V. the Extraterrestrial.
Deeky: LOL. No Country for Psychic Vaginas.
Liss: The Psychic Vaginas of Madison County.
Deeky: Night of the Psychic Vaginas.
Liss: Psychic Vagina 9 From Outer Space.
Deeky: The Day the Psychic Vagina Stood Still.
Liss: Gangs of Psychic Vagina.
Deeky: Psychic Vagina Runner.
Liss: The Psychic Vagina from U.N.C.L.E.
Deeky: Clash of the Psychic Vaginas.
Liss: The Psychic Vagina Strikes Back.
Deeky: Psychic Vaginabusters.
Liss: "I ain't afraida no psychic vaginas!"
Deeky: Psychic Vagina Race 2000.
Liss: Girls Just Wanna Have Psychic Vaginas.
Deeky: Psychic Vagina Dancing.
Liss: The Wizard of Psychic Vagina.
Deeky: Gone with the Psychic Vagina.
Liss: Psychic Vaginalypse Now.
Fin.
Today in Fat Hatred
From Brazil: An ad campaign for Marilia Light dairy products. If you don't eat them, you make a bigger target for people wanting to shoot at you. Or something.
[Click images to embiggen.]
[Images are of a fat female form and fat male form pictured as rifle targets, with various body parts marked with weights as targets are marked with points.]
This? Is eliminationist imagery. And the frequency (and increasing acceptability) of imagery like this, combined with "war on obesity" and anti-obesity rhetoric, is terrifying. "Obesity" defines fat people in a way that many other physical differences don't, because being fat is viewed not only as a flaw, but as a flaw by choice, a moral failing due to weakness of character. There are lots of people who would look at the crooked scar running down my spine from surgery and consider me less than for the so-called imperfection—but very few who would axiomatically assume I'm a bad person with serious character flaws for it.
My fat, on the other hand, is a different story. And their hatred and prejudice is underwritten—and justified—by eliminationist rhetoric that targets the bodies of fat people. As if those bodies are somehow separate from the consciousnesses that inhabit them.
There is not "a thin person" inside of me screaming to get out. There is only me, screaming for my right to exist in the body I have.
[Via Copyranter.]
Quote of the Day
"I am as strong as a man. I am as smart as a man. I demand the absolute respect of a man. If you understand this, we will get along well."—Peggielene Bartels, a secretary at the Embassy of Ghana in Silver Spring, Maryland, also known as Nana Amuah Afenyi VI, the lady king of Otuam. Bartels inherited the kingship after her uncle died and the elders determined she would be his successor. She suspects the corrupt elders thought they would find her easily manageable because she's a woman. Ahem. [Via BeckySharper.]
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Iain's Styling Gel, for all your Rick Astley Lookalike Needs.
Recommended Reading:
Marcella: Carnival Against Sexual Violence 90
Andy: RIP Robert Carter
Imani: Embracing Precious: The nuances and truths in the individual and collective stories we tell.
Renee: Weight Loss Companies Target Gabourey Sidibe
Lindsay: Four-Year-Old Hate Speech
Melissa: Quote of the Day
meloukhia: Dear Imprudence: Polydactyly and the Single Person
Melissa: Guess What? Women Buy More Movie Tickets Than Men
Leave your links in comments...
Rielle Hunter Gives First Interview
And yes, I've seen it, so emails are unnecessary. As is the sharing of my opinion on this interview. The end.
Today in Transphobia
This morning, Shaker koach forwarded me the link to this AP story about queer seniors who come out and/or transition later in life. It's a pretty good article, quite moving in places—even though, like many articles in the mainstream media dealing with gender and sexuality, it's imperfect, and the Herald Tribune headline, "Gay seniors come out late, start second life" erases trans people altogether, which is particularly obnoxious given that the article opens with the story of Chrissie Farthing, a trans woman.
At the other end of the visibility spectrum—but at the same damn end of the lack of respect spectrum—is Slate's news aggregator The Slatest, which shares the story under the gobsmacking headline: "More Grannies Are Becoming Trannies." Seriously.
[Screen capture of headline.]
Shaker itoodislikeit is piping mad:
Let me pull a little quote from the first paragraph of the article you are linking, Slatest: "On his 75th birthday, Bill Farthing decided to be reborn. In the six years since he'd buried his wife of 45 years, he'd felt as he did long before: Lonesome, different, outcast. He wondered if he was going crazy; he contemplated suicide." In other words, this is a serious article about changing social norms and PEOPLE MISERABLE ENOUGH TO CONSIDER SUICIDE, and your idea of appropriate coverage is to make a TRANNY JOKE.
Really, what can I add? Perhaps only this: The Slatest isn't a queer space; it doesn't even specifically identify as an ally space; Slate isn't a safe space (nor does it try to be); the author of this item isn't identified. Thus, there's no possibility of an in-community use of "trannies" here—and it's not being used ironically, to indicate the Othering of trans people by a group attacking them, either. The appropriateness of either of those uses can be debated (though not in this thread, please), but my point is that it's neither of those things, anyway. It's literally just the straightforward and wildly insensitive and indefensible use of "trannies," frequently used as a slur by violent transphobes, to make some suck-ass rhymy headline.
It's exactly this kind of casual bigotry that made me stop reading Slate years ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure this was the day I unbookmarked them, and I've never deliberately made my way to the site again.
Contact Slate.
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.]
Socially Constructed Before Conception
In the fall of 2010, I'm teaching a new (for me) class, the title of which I've whittled down to "A Brief and General Overview of the Construction of Femininity and the Ways in which It Was/Is Reflected, Perpetuated, and Mandated by Popular Culture in the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries." Strangely, the class schedule still refers to it by the way too broad, overly-ambitious title, "The Construction of Femininity."
In any case, I am re-reading Emily Martin's "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male- Female Roles."
Martin addresses the bias present in scientific language and literature, particularly in discussion of reproductive processes. She noted,That the picture of egg and sperm drawn in popular as well as scientific accounts of reproductive biology relies on stereotypes central to our cultural definitions of male and female. The stereotypes imply not only that female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterparts but also that women are less worthy than men.
Thus, in scientific and popular literature, menstruation is referred to as "wasteful" and in terms of "losing" and "debris," ovaries are described as "battered," "old and worn out," and the egg is "passive" while the production of sperm is described as "remarkable," "amazing," and "a feat" and sperm are described as active.
That article was published almost 20 years ago, not nearly enough time for the people at National Geographic Channel (NGC) to have heard of it, apparently. Last night, they premiered "Sizing Up Sperm," a show that presented the "epic journey" of sperm from ejaculation to fertilization. Someone sat down in a meeting somewhere, raised hir hand, and said, "Hey, y'all, let's view the female reproductive system through the eyes of sperm!" Because how can you understand anything except through its relationship to "male" systems? I mean the whole journey is called "The Great Sperm Race" as if the woman's body and reproductive system are just incidental.
The process is "scaled up to human size" (or "man-size," as one of the scientists says) so that the sperm are represented as white-clothed (I'm not touching that right now) heroes, "real people," NGC tells us, racing towards the passive prize--the egg. The program describes sperm in the heroic language that Martin detailed. Sperm are "smart," "fun to watch in a petri dish," and are propelled by a "mighty tail." The sperm-producer on the show, Glenn, was clueless about "the miracle of engineering in his pants," according to the narrator.
The woman's body is represented as terrain to be overcome and defeated. Why do I say defeated? Because the narrator describes the process of fertilization and conception as an "epic quest," and "a war," calls the sperm "250 million genetic couriers... about to invade Emily's body" and talks in terms of "securing victory." For sperm, "landing in Emily's vagina is like D-Day."
Anyway, back to women-as-landscapes. There are forests and mountains and oceans. There is a rough, rocky road (aka the floor of the vagina. Yes, seriously). The woman's reproductive system is defined in terms of its treachery or pleasantness to sperm. "Everything in the vagina," says one of the scientists, "works against the sperm's survival." The vagina has a "dark side." The cervix is a "dark, treacherous maze of uncharted tunnels." It is "hell," a "twisted, nightmarish, urban environment." On the other hand, the fallopian tubes are "sperm heaven." But, it's not all sunshine at this point! The egg's short life span presents "a final, fatal hurdle."
"Worst of all" according to the narrator, "thanks to the female immune system, sperm are covered in acid." The leukocytes are black-clothed, scary, masked zombie monsters who kill our heroes in a process of "utter decimation." It doesn't matter that they are protecting the body from possible infection or "invaders"; they are "elite assassins." Who knew an active, working immune system was so evil?
Near the end of the race, two sperm remain--one male and one female--drawn to the egg by "the red carpet" it lays out and by the "lily-of-the-valley" scent it produces. The egg just looms, waiting patiently for the sperm. As Martin wroteIt is remarkable how "femininely" the egg behaves and how "masculinely" the sperm. The egg is seen as large and passive. It does not move or journey, but passively "is transported," "is swept," or even "drifts" along the fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, "streamlined," and invariably active... with a "whiplashlike motion and strong lurches" they can "burrow through the egg coat" and "penetrate" it.
Martin discusses quite a bit the characterization of the egg as "dependent," in need of rescue by the sperm. The egg, unlike the sperm, is not remarkable in its own right--the sperm makes it into something.
Not surprisingly, the male sperm "won." This allows the program writers' to stray into New Testament territory. The sperm, you see, sacrificed itself. But "it did not die in vain"; "it gave it's life to start a new one--a baby boy." Please control all hurl urges; I wouldn't want you to mess up your keyboard.
And oh, while the sperm are shown as "real people," the egg is just a big ol' ball. Apparently, it's easier to envision sperm as human.
In conclusion, I'd like to present to you one of the cutting edge experiments presented in the show. An evolutionary psychologist (ok, y'all know where this is headed, right?) theorized that women have an estrous cycle (which the narrator helpfully described as going into heat) during which the "reproductive processes control woman's actions and man's responses." To test the the theory, he chose to conduct a study in a "gentleman's club." He was amazed by the evidence that he found--women in "estrous" made nearly twice as much money as menstruating women. The reason, he theorized, was that women in estrous are more attractive to men.
More attractive was defined as having more symmetrical breasts and a thinner waist.
