Wookiee Family Portrait. With hairless cat.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning.]
"Mr. Wood, I found you not guilty, so I can't sentence you as a defendant in any crimes, but earlier today, I sentenced you to life married to her."—Baltimore County Judge Darrell Russell, who performed a marriage ceremony, at the request of domestic violence suspect Frederick Wood, between Wood and his alleged victim so she could take the stand and invoke marital privilege. "Nowhere on the recording of the proceeding could the I-Team hear the judge ask the alleged victim if she wanted to get married. Ordinarily, couples have to wait 48 hours between getting a license and actually getting married. A different judge agreed to waive that requirement in this case, [I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller] reported."
The judge has been reassigned.
[H/T to Shaker Carrie.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Deeky's Lostversations with His Totes Boyfriend Sawyer.
Recommended Reading:
Anji: Fifteenth Carnival of Feminists and Tenth Carnival of Feminist Parenting
Andy: Dallas Jail Guard Fired for Saying 'All Gays Should Be Annihilated'
Cara: RIP Juanita W. Goggins
Sady: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Studies Department: The Boys of Summer
Pilgrim Soul: Nicholas Sparks is a Parody of Himself
And Happy Blogiversary to Marcella!
Leave your links in comments...
Mass Resistance made me mad enough to vomit.
by C.L. Minou, who blogs about trans and feminist issues for such esteemed locales as The Second Awakening, Below the Belt, and Tiger Beatdown, when she is not destroying the fabric of America by spending a weekend at a hotel in New England.
First Event is an annual conference held in January by the Tiffany Club of New England, a transgender support group. Like any conference, it consists of workshops, cocktail parties, and banquets with awards ceremonies and occasionally pompous keynote addresses. About the only difference between it and, say, a Linux convention is that there will be slightly more trans people at First Event. (There may also be more computer engineers, for that matter.)
But that's not all. According to Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group Mass Resistance, First Event is what America will look like in the horrifying post-Homosexual Agenda™ world soon to be imposed upon the honest, godfearing citizens of These United.
And to prove their point, they made a video.
[Paraphrase of video by Liss: Shitty video footage of people minding their own business, doing things like walking, using the restroom, and entering elevators. The various clips are labeled with alarmist language such as "The following clip shows a young girl entering an elevator with a man dressed as a woman." The entire thing is prefaced with the dire warning: "This is what you will see across America unless this radical movement is stopped." OH NOES!]
Yes, friends, thrill to the horrors you soon must endure! Tall people wearing short skirts! People playing punk rock while wearing bras! People eating bland food! People dancing! And, most horrifying of all, people riding elevators.
Wait...don't people do all those things now, you might ask? Don't tall people go to the bathroom, play in bands, and ride elevators?
But you see, those people aren't transgendered. That's the issue here. (The author reserves judgment on whether or not Mass Resistance considers trans people, well, people, mostly because her digestion is of a delicate nature and not up to the task of visiting their website.)
Now, I will admit, watching this video made me mad. Not mad enough to spit, but mad enough to vomit. I mean, legally there's probably nothing to prevent them from doing this, but morally? It's a phenomenal invasion of privacy, not to mention potentially dangerous to the livelihoods and even lives of the conference attendees who may not be out or generally public about their transness. (First Event tends to attract a higher proportion of crossdressing or questioning trans folk.) A conference like First Event offers people who might not normally get a chance to express their full gender a safe space to enjoy themselves with dignity and freedom from the disapproval of most of the people around them.
And, you know, the chance to grab a pint at the sports bar and play a game of pool in a cocktail dress. That's not a chance most people get every day.
The video is a primer on how to do trans hate. First, mock everyone's appearance, including, bizarrely, their height. (I have a theory: there were undoubtedly trans women there for whom the only clue that they might be trans would be their height; this so terrified the Mass Ignorance folks that they obsessively watched anyone taller than Dr. Ruth.) Second, show a bunch of perfectly ordinary activities that are now made sick and disgusting because they are being done by people...who might not look like the gender they were assigned at birth. Third, flog the old bathroom libel with its breathless "threat" that evil awful men will invade the sanctity of the Ladies' Room. Which of course would never happen unless godless civil rights laws are passed. Oh and fourth: What About the Children? (Although, think about it: isn't it likely that the little girl in that clip was the daughter of the trans person waiting with her? Ferfoooksakes?)
More than that, though: this video demonstrates exactly why trans, gay, and lesbian rights must remain part of the same movement. Because this is being used as a wedge issue: the unspeakable horrors of people enjoying a weekend at a rather pedestrian hotel north of Boston are the club they'll use to fight back gay marriage, housing and job discrimination legislation, and even hate crimes laws. They hope that enough people—even, I am sad to say, some gay and lesbian people—will find the sight of crossdressers so distressing that people will oppose all the other parts of bills like ENDA. Which ultimately will hurt gay and lesbian people, because there are many of them—despite the protestations of HRC—whose gender presentation is variant enough to earn them discrimination.
Now, as it turns out I've actually been to First Event. Like a lot of trans events, the hotel usually requested that the trans folk only used a designated ladies' or men's room. (I'll admit, that was often more observed in the breach, but there you have it.) And I'm sure they didn't tell any other guests, any more than the hotel I stayed at one time when I was in Texas to get some electro done warned me that an evangelical convention was being held in the hotel. (And honey, I was in a lot more danger from them than anybody in Peabody was from the First Event folks.) But do you know what the biggest irony about this whole hateful, awful charade from Mass Resistance is?
It's this: the organizers of First Event ask people to indicate on their name badge if they mind being photographed. Because they want to respect their privacy.
But of course privacy is a straight privilege.
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.]
Random Realization
Last night, I was shopping online for dinner plates and ran across this image*:
We've probably all seen similar descriptions before, but sometimes I am struck by how many times, in so many little ways, people of color are reminded that "white," in terms of race, is presumed to be the default or that white people are presumed not to "have" race in the same ways that we are.
We are "other" and the constant reinforcement of that is tiring.
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*The image is of two bride-and-groom ornaments. The first, depicting a white couple, is labeled "Bride and Groom Ornament." The second, depicting a black couple, is labeled "African American Bride and Groom Ornament."
A Story About Social Anxiety and Magic
I'm pretty sure the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life was when a card trick magician approached me at a pizza parlor. I am possibly the worst person to be a magician's assistant in the world.
He couldn't have known that, but that's the problem with wrangling strangers into your public magic act.
Birthers: The Gift That Keeps Giving
Hawaii is having to deal with so many requests for Obama's birth certificate that they're actually considering a bill that would let state officials ignore the pesky assholes. Following is a winning example of the asshattery known as the Birther movement:
"They usually say that by not giving out his birth certificate we're breaking the law," [Janice] Okubo said.Nice try, asshole. And I bet you probably think that W was always a Texan.
"But we would be breaking the law by giving out a birth certificate to someone who does not have a right to it."
When Okubo told one writer they did not have a right to Obama's birth certificate because they were not related to the president, the person wrote back saying they, indeed, had a common ancestor.
"They said they have a tangible right to his birth certificate because they're descended from Adam," Okubo said, referring to the biblical figure. "We told them they need to provide some type of legal documentation."
Lost Open Thread
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...
Hey, Losties!
Lost: The Complete Collection
Due August 24, 2010. All six seasons of the series on DVD and Blu-Ray. Other features are still a bit smokey, but it should be full of more bonus features than an Oceanic cargo hold is full of tarps.
In the meantime, all of the songs featured in the show have been collected like Sawyer's ultimate mix tape, so give 'em a listen.
[Cross-posted.]
On Values and Faith
This being an election year (can it be? I've barely recovered from the last election), I've begun to hear familiar murmurings from conservatives about how the GOP will appeal to "values voters" to win back control of Congress.
As it happens, I'm a values voter: I deeply value autonomy and consent. I deeply value reproductive freedom. I deeply value equality and justice for people who are female and/or queer and/or trans and/or of color and/or disabled and/or poor and/or fat and/or in any other way marginalized. I deeply value marriage equality. I deeply value stem cell research. I deeply value the separation of church and state. I deeply value science being taught in schools. I deeply value universal healthcare. I deeply value a robust social safety net.
I value lots of other things, too, but those seem to be the ones which make me not a "values voter." Not as far as the GOP is concerned.
Despite their reflexive and compulsive intoning of the word "values" during every election year, as if it's a magical incantation that can be uttered only by those who understand its complex truth, it doesn't really mean anything, in and of itself. It's an ethically neutral word. Everyone has values. What matters is not that you have values, but what values you have. Joseph Stalin valued killing people. Jeffrey Dahmer valued eating people. George Bush valued torturing people. I value not killing people, not eating them, and not torturing them. See? Everyone has values.
And, you know, I have faith, too. Not religious faith, but that isn't the only kind. I have faith in my fellow humans—and I'm not so sure that particular brand of faith should be so easily disregarded, because, quite frankly, it's a hell of a lot harder than having faith in a god, at least in my experience. The god to whom I was introduced as a child was never deliberately evil or unkind; that god may have been mysterious, but he had a plan—and you knew that everything made sense according to his plan, even if it was inexplicable to you. And there was a reward for having faith in that god. Faith in him was your ticket to eternity in heaven. Faith in him, as far as the reasons he offered, was simple.
Humans, on the other hand, the troublesome shits, conspire not only to test but to betray your faith at every opportunity. Too often evil and unkind, they mostly can't even be bothered to provide a decent reason for their ill behavior. They're unpredictable, nonsensical, irrational, and unreasonable, and there's no promise of a reward for having faith in them. Sometimes, in fact, you get nothing but spit in your eye in exchange for your trust. For your faith.
The difference between faith in a god and faith in humankind is like the difference between dropping money in the canister of a Recognizable Charity bell-ringer and placing money directly in the hand of someone in need. Your Recognizable Charity donation goes to someone you don't know, whom you'll never see, and, although you're not sure how it all works, you trust that your money will help in a productive way. It's an easy trust—the Recognizable Charity's been there a long time, and they've got a good reputation, and they promise you something for your effort.
On the other hand, giving the money directly to someone in need requires having faith in the person to whom you're giving it, respecting hir ability to make the best decisions for hirself, letting go of any expectation for how that money will be spent. You may hope that zie won't, say, put it on a horse, despite being hungry, because the temptation of gambling is stronger than hir will to nourish hir body. You may hope that zie buys hirself a sandwich, or mittens, or a pint, but you must respect that your hope is a projection, and have faith in hir self-determination. It's a harder trust—and it's not tax deductible, either.
The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course. There are plenty of people who have faith in a god(s) and faith in humankind. But there are a lot of people who only have faith in a god, because their religion tells them humans aren't worth having faith in.
Those tend to be the people who want to legislate morality, because they don't trust people to make good decisions, because they don't even trust themselves. And those are the people who are most often called the "values voters" and to whose religious beliefs the word "faith" has come to refer.
It's a terrible thing that the people who have the least faith in their fellow humans have commandeered the term, because, on this earth, humans are the only ones who can feed the hungry, clothe the poor, provide healthcare to the sick, guarantee equality and freedom.
Those of us who have faith in each other value decidedly earthy humanness, with all its flaws and foibles. That doesn't sound particularly inspiring; there are no hymns, no psalms, no Hallelujah chorus for having faith in other people.
But maybe there should be.
Because there are the times when they surprise you, when your faith pays off, makes you grin until you are certain your face will crack, or your eyes well with tears, at the wonder of how much overwhelming goodness can be found in we hairless apes. It provides a reward the beautiful magnitude of which is only bestowed because of the risk that things could have—maybe should have—gone so horribly wrong.
It's not typical that your faith in people is remunerated by your expectations being exceeded, when they amaze you with the depth of their decency, and its rarity makes such optimism, such faith, difficult. And makes it a faith worth courting, too, even if our values seem a bit grotty and earthbound.
I Write Letters
Bread and Teaspoons Twenty-Six
Good morning (unless it isn't where you are, in which case I wish you Good $TIME_PERIOD), and welcome to this week's installment of Shakesville's networking post, Bread and Teaspoons*.
This is a (theoretically) weekly post providing a spot for Shakers to network a little with one another, see if we can help each other out some.
Remember, if you’re running or part of a small business, you’re encouraged to drop links here for that. I’m happy to see Shakers makin’ their own way in whatever manner that is.
Here's how it works: There should be four sorts of comments here.
1) You comment here with any details of work you're seeking: where, what, that sort of thing. You give an e-mail address at which you can be reached - feel free to set up a special e-mail for it, if you don't want to post your regular one for the world to spam - and if another Shaker has a lead, they can contact you directly to pass it along.
A work-seeking comment should include:
Please do NOT include information such as your full name or telephone number, as this is and will remain a public post, and once posted, there's no taking it back (because it'll be spidered by a search engine, not because we don't want you to).
It is explicitly alright to comment to this each week with similar info.
For example, I might post a comment saying:
I'm a professional translator of French, German and Russian, with nearly 17 years of experience. I'm looking for basically any translation job, academic, commercial, personal, genealogical, you name it, with one exception: I do not currently have certification, so if you need a certified translator (usually for legal docs: birth certificates, divorce decrees, wills), you need someone else.
I am also available as a writer or editor, for academic, journalistic, creative, marketing-oriented or any other type of written communication. Basically, if you'll pay me, I'll write or edit it. My company website is found here.
You can contact me for business purposes through my business address, cait@cogitantes.net.
2) The second type of comment would be task offering: if you've got a job you think might suit someone here, consider posting it as a comment. Use the same guidelines as above: give general information here, and specific information when you exchange e-mails. An offered task might look something like this:
I have a doctoral thesis which needs proofing and editing by Thursday, is anyone available? You can reach me at ABDShaker@shakesville.miskatonic.edu.
In addition to that, I’ve decided to welcome appropriate job resource sites for progressives, e.g. Canada’s Charity Village, which specializes in jobs with non-profits and NGOs.
3) The third kind of comment I'd love to see is success stories! We’d love to know when this works out, and people actually find some employment through our efforts. If you feel like sharing, tell us how it worked out for you. :)
4) If you’re a progressive working for or running a small business and would like to include a pointer to your business, you may do so. If you’ve never otherwise posted before here (i.e., you’re a lurker), I may check in with you to be certain you’re a Shaker and not a spammer. If it turns into a spamfest, or we start getting businesses that are of dubious progressive credentials, we may need to revisit this one, but let’s give it a try.
So, that's what we'd like to see.
What we do NOT want to see:
So there. Have at it, Shakers, for Bread and Teaspoons!
Important disclaimers: Shakesville makes no endorsement or claim as to the capabilities of anyone commenting to this post, and anyone considering hiring someone should be prepared to treat it like any other business situation: DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE. We're not doing any screening of this, so you'll want to make sure you check references, use safe-payment procedures (e.g., ask for a deposit), all the things you'd do when working with any stranger on the Internet. While this is intended for Shakers in general, remember that there is no real obstacle to being able to comment here, and do the things you need to do to keep yourself safe.
* As might be evident, this is an intentional reference to Bread and Roses, a longtime slogan of the left. In this case, though, my hope is that if we achieve steady bread, we will use it to power our teaspoon use.
The last several Bread and Teaspoons: Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-Two. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five.
Question of the Day
This one time, I was taking a shower when I heard a strange ka-dong! sound. It scared the crap out of me (not literally, thank the wizard). I looked down at the shower floor! And there was a damn penny! Lying there! It scared the crap out of me! Again! (Also not literally, but closer this time!) I thought there was a polterghost throwing pennies at me!
Then I looked at my belly and saw a Silly Putty-style indentation of a penny thereupon.
Turns out that damn thing was stuck to my belly the whole time!
What's the strangest place you've discovered money? Cash or coinage accepted.
Um
Echidne notes Where the Female Bloggers Are*:
Not at the meeting Speaker Pelosi organized for bloggers about the health care reform proposal:For the record, I wasn't invited.
I just got back from an on the record meeting for blogger with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Also present were David Waldman, Igor Volsky, Greg Sargent, Jason Rosenbaum, Ryan Grim, Chris Bowers, Brian Beutler, and John Aravosis. Aside from hearing a lot about parliamentary procedure that I think is being written about too much, and learning that having a woman Speaker of the House doesn't guarantee that any women will be at congressional blogger briefings, the main message was one of confidence: "I have faith in my members that we will be passing this legislation."Perhaps women were invited but couldn't make it? ... Why does any of this matter? Because of what has been offered up as THE compromise in the whole debacle: Further reductions in women's reproductive choice. To add insult to injury is neither smart nor kind. That's why I reallyreally hope that Pelosi invited umpteen female bloggers but they were all too busy to attend. The alternative would make me angry.
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* A reference to the "Where are all the female bloggers?" mystification that periodically grips the men of the progressive blogosphere.
Proposed
I would like to put forth the radical notion that, if a fat person is fat by choice, it's okay.
I'll give you a moment to sit with that idea—that it's okay for someone to choose to be fat. Because it really is a radical notion, and, like other radical notions, it is both has the capacity and is likely to evoke visceral reactions of protest. Like: "But being fat is (potentially) unhealthy! And that's not okay!" But, if you give yourself a moment or two, you'll probably realize there are other potentially unhealthy things that people do, which you would probably argue in favor of allowing them to continue doing.
It's more dangerous to ride in a car than be a pedestrian. But if a person capable of walking to the store wanted instead to hop in their car to pick up milk a mile away, you'd probably think that's okay. Because, hey, maybe they have a good reason for preferring to drive.
More people get hurt jumping out of airplanes for fun than get hurt gardening for fun. But if someone prefers the adrenaline rush of skydiving to the relaxation of gardening, you'd probably think that's okay. Because everyone's different, right?
Sometimes, doctors tell patients that a surgery, or an experimental treatment, or a new drug, might actually be more likely to kill them than cure them. But if someone decided to opt for the risky cure, you'd probably think that's okay. Because it's that person's body, not yours.
So maybe it's all right for you to think it's okay, if someone chooses to be fat, rather than thin.
Because, the thing is, holding in judgment people who are fat by choice doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given our general tolerance for all sorts of things that people do which carry with them risks to their health (like being born, or giving birth, and things way more controversial). And people are going to be fat, or not fat, irrespective of your judgment about fat people. Letting go of fat hatred won't change anything—except, of course, to make the world a little bit better a place for its fat inhabitants.
It can be a hatred that's hard to let go of, even for fat people, because letting go of that hatred, and replacing it with acceptance, can feel akin to giving fat people permission to be fat.
But being in the position of feeling like permission is yours to give is a manifestation of privilege. And maybe it's all right to let that privilege go.
Maybe it's all right for you to hold the position that if a fat person spends hir days as a walking stereotype of a "bad fatty," eating mass quantities of unhealthy food, that is hir right.
Maybe it's all right for you not to draw a distinction between "good fatties" and "bad fatties," even as you recognize not everyone is fat for the same reasons.
Maybe it's all right for you to consider that if a fat person is spending hir days eating mass quantities of unhealthy food, it's none of your business (unless zie invites you to make it your business) whether zie is doing so because zie has an eating disorder, or because zie has an addiction, or because zie is self-medicating with food, or because zie is insulating hirself from abuse, or because zie is creating a barrier of flab against real intimacy, or because zie is bored, or because zie is self-destructive, or because zie has no will power, or because zie is just a gluttonous foodie who loves the taste of rich foods.
Maybe it's all right for you to acquiesce that you cannot tell just by looking at hir for what reasons zie is choosing to be fat, or even if it's hir choice at all.
Maybe it's all right for you to treat fat people with dignity either way—and let fat people sort out for themselves the business of their being fat.
