Bronski Beat: "Smalltown Boy"
This one's for Constance McMillan.
Today in Just Like Jesus Would Do!
What would Jesus do if he were a parent living in Fulton, MS? He'd totally arrange a fake prom to send the "weird kids" to and secretly set up another prom for all the regular students. Yeah, so what if Jesus never had any kids and never lived in Fulton? He still spoke English (it's in the bible, people!) and was pretty fucking clear in his Sermon on the Mount when he said: "Fuck you, outcasts!"
Constance McMillen told The Advocate yesterday, "They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them."
McMillen was told by prom organizers last week that the event would be held at a local country club in Fulton. But only seven students showed up, including two students with learning difficulties. You see, Fulton parents arranged another prom in secret for all the student who were non-gay or without learning difficulties. Just like Jesus would do.
Of the developmentally disabled students, McMillen had this to say: "They had the time of their lives. That's the one good thing that come out of this."
She added "[These kids] didn't have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom]." Just like Jesus would have done.
Bread and Teaspoons Twenty-Eight
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.
NB: I have added a bit to the guidelines for what’s on-topic here, to allow the posting of useful job resources for progressives.
Also 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, if I were to comment - rather than taking advantage of my position by posting it up here in the OP! - I'd leave one saying:
I'm a professional translator of French, German and Russian, with 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.
We also 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.
** "Theoretically", because sometimes my life or my depression interfere. :)
The last several Bread and Teaspoons: Twenty-Two. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five.
Twenty-Six. Twenty-Seven.
The Third Woman
[Trigger Warning for violence]
Yesterday's New York Times reports that the United States military has admitted killing three Afghan women during a special operations mission:
KABUL, Afghanistan — After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.
The admission immediately raised questions about what really happened during the Feb. 12 operation — and what falsehoods followed — including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the nature of their deaths.
A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.
So they are caught in a lie, and NATO officials continue to shift the story around, searching for a workable level of deceit.
I read more and more closely as the article progresses. A few paragraphs later, Richard A. Oppel writes,
NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians — a district prosecutor and a local police chief — during the raid, on a home near Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan. The two men were shot to death when they came out of their home, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate.
Three women also died that night at the same home: One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. NATO military officials had suggested that the women were actually stabbed to death — or had died by some other means — hours before the raid, an explanation that implied that family members or others at the home might have killed them.
Oppel identifies the men by their professional roles and two of the women by their reproductive status (a pregnant mother of 10 and a pregnant mother of six). What about the third woman—was she not pregnant enough to merit any specific mention of who she was? Please note that I don’t blame Oppel; I think he’s working with the information he has. I notice, though, that his words perfectly sum up women’s roles and most societies' attitudes towards us.
We know that when you have war, there will be war crimes, and the cover-ups that follow. What really strikes me about this particular case is NATO military officials' reliance on cultural narratives about misogynistic Afghans to inform their cover-up. They expect us to find it credible that the families of these three women stabbed them to death at home on the day of a party celebrating the birth of a child. Indeed, they expect us to find that more credible than the idea that the women died in the same special ops raid that killed the men. I can practically hear the hand-waving: "oh, you know those people—they mistreat their women. That's why we have to liberate them, and why you, little lady, should be grateful you are safe in the West!"
Nobody killed the three women just because they were women; it was not a crime of misogyny. But the cover-up relied in part on misogyny (their families must have done it! Happens all the time!), and on the denial of misogyny (we'd never kill innocent pregnant women—they must have done it).
The society that ducks, points fingers, and cries "but they're worse!"; the society that claims to be "liberating" women from tyranny even as it makes life less safe for them, is in deep denial of its own misogyny. And that denial is part of what allows such a society to be convinced of its own heroism. That conviction leads to statements like this:
The investigators, the official said, “alluded to the fact that bullets were missing but did not discuss anything specific to that. Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.”
Our guys. Couldn't have been our guys. If crimes were committed, it must have been them.
There is a lot more in this article, of course, and I invite you to read the whole thing and discuss it.
Hey, This Seems Familiar
trigger warning
I have a new piece up at the Guardian's "Comment Is Free America" about that cartoon that depicts a scene after President Obama has raped the Statue of Liberty. I try to put that cartoon and so much of the related sentiment in historical perspective:
The juxtaposition of this cartoon and the violence/assassination threats [against Obama and his supporters] are significant, as well, in historical context. One of the primary reasons given for mob action that resulted in the death of black men in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the accusation that a black man had raped a white woman. The cartoonist has accused President Obama, figuratively, of that crime – say what you want about Liberty's greenish hue; women who historically represented the US, from Columbia to other depictions of Liberty, were white. Obama, according to the cartoonist, has violated this symbol of both white womanhood and America. This serves as more justification for retaliating violently against him.Please check out the whole thing!
When You Have a War, There Will Be War Crimes
And there will be cover-ups of those war crimes, and then, sometimes, the ugly truth will come to light [trigger warning]:
The Web site WikiLeaks.org released a graphic video on Monday showing an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Baghdad.Description of the content of the video, which may be triggering, is below.
A senior American military official confirmed that the video was authentic.
Reuters had long pressed for the release of the video, which consists of 38 minutes of black-and-white aerial video and conversations between pilots in two Apache helicopters as they open fire on people on a street in Baghdad. The attack killed 12, among them the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and the driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
At a news conference at the National Press Club, WikiLeaks said it had acquired the video from whistle-blowers in the military and viewed it after breaking the encryption code. WikiLeaks edited the video to 17 minutes.
On the day of the attack, United States military officials said that the helicopters had been called in to help American troops who had been exposed to small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in a raid. "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force," Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad, said then.The Pentagon flat-out lied about the unmistakable nature of what happened.
But the video does not show hostile action. Instead, it begins with a group of people milling around on a street, among them, according to WikiLeaks, Mr. Noor-Eldeen and Mr. Chmagh. The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Mr. Noor-Eldeen's camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.
"Look at those dead bastards," one pilot says. "Nice," the other responds.
A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. "All you gotta do is pick up a weapon," one pilot says.
A short time later a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," one pilot says.
At another point, an American armored vehicle arrives and appears to roll over one of the dead. "I think they just drove over a body," one of the pilots says, chuckling a little.
So it's no wonder that, as reported by Think Progress, that "Wikileaks has been targeted by the Pentagon and related intelligence agencies for its cooperation with military whistleblowers. In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center put together a report outlining tactics to suppress whisteblowers, in which it cited Wikileaks by name as one organization it intends to "destroy [as] a center of gravity" for whisteblowing activity. Meanwhile, the Wikileaks founder has alleged that his organization is being intimidated and spied on by American intelligence agencies."
It's no wonder. But it's still appalling.
Digby notes that "the most trusted name in news" isn't covering themselves in glory with their coverage of this story, either.
We've got a government at war which refuses to be transparent, a military complex that covers up the crimes of its soldiers, and a media who are eminently willing to be complicit in the subterfuge and obfuscation.
I don't know if I can find words to properly convey how thoroughly angry this makes me.
One Man's Opinion
Late last night -- well, late for me -- the phone rang. It was an automated polling service.
"Do you consider yourself to be a Tea Party Patriot?" said the recorded voice. My response was terse, consisting of two words, the second one being "No." That was followed by, "Do you support Sarah Palin?" I issued the same response.
The call was abruptly terminated at the other end.
I think I got my point across.
Crossposted.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker molliecat: What's the weirdest thing you've seen beside the road?
When I was about eight, I was riding my bike around the block and found in some long grass beside the road a crumpled birthday card with the picture of a fuzzy duckling on the front. I mean, something really adorable, like this or this. Inside, it read, scrawled in all caps:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WHORE.I quite honestly can't think of anything I've seen/found weirder than that!
I HATE YOU,
STEVE.
Quote of the Day
"It's a total drag. I've been lucky to get interesting parts but there are still not that many out there for women. And everybody is so critical of women. If there's a movie starring a man that tanks, then I don't see an article about the fact that the movie starred a man and that must be why it bombed. Then a film comes out where a woman is in the lead, or a movie comes out where a bunch of girls are roller derbying, and it doesn't make much money and you see articles about how women can't carry a film."—Actress Ellen Page, on "the way women are treated in the movie business."
On Abortion Exceptions: "Rape, Incest, Threat to Life"
Because there is a growing and increasingly vocal "pro-life" contingent in the Democratic Party (see: Congressman Bart Stupak and his BFF Senator Ben Nelson), we are hearing ever more frequently about the Triumvirate of Acceptable Abortion Exceptions: Rape, incest, and threat to the life of the pregnant woman.
(It used to be life or health, but then a bunch of straw-ladies got late-term straw-abortions after changing their silly little lady-minds about having straw-babies and made up straw-lies about "mental distress" to get them, so now wise "pro-life" proponents limit the exception only to women who risk death due to an identifiable physical complication of pregnancy, and none of this bullshit about fake things like mental health, snort, that only exist in the fevered daydreams of Oprah guests.)
So. The Exceptioneers are Very Concerned about exceptions for pregnancies as a result of rape or incest—always with the two separate and distinct categories, never connected with the more appropriate "and/or," but treated as mutually exclusive possibilities, which might give someone who didn't know better the impression that the Exceptioneers think a father impregnating his property daughter is only icky because of the potential chromosomal clusterfuck to our otherwise pristine gene pool (!)—and threat to the life of the pregnant woman. And they are very proud of their Highly Principled Concern, shouting these exceptions at anyone who listen, as evidence of their magnanimous compassion.
They must trust that no one of any consequence will ever examine their position too closely, lest it become side-splittingly evident that they are merely mendacious opportunists attempting to straddle a compromise between the pro-choice and anti-choice positions that doesn't exist, trying to pretend into being their imaginary Principled Moderate Middle Ground with rhetoric that's absolutely nothing more than a classier way of saying, "Suffer the consequences, slut."
Only if you were raped (and provably so, in one of those infallible courts of law that never favors rapists, lest you think you can claim to have been raped and just handed access to an abortion like you have autonomy over your own body or something), or became pregnant as the result of incest, or you will probably die if your pregnancy continues, should you be allowed to have access to abortion. But if you want an abortion for any other reason under the sun, well, fuck you, you should have kept your legs closed.
Leaving aside that "I don't want to be pregnant" is all the reason any woman should ever need, the Exceptioneers' position also excludes a multitude of things that are just as out of any woman's control as any of their precious exceptions: If you were raped but can't prove it, if you had a contraceptive failure, if you just lost your job, if you found out the fetus will die as soon as it's born, if you're pregnant by someone who became abusive, if you've been diagnosed with a non-life threatening illness, if your existing child has become ill, if your spouse has become ill, if your parent has become ill, if your psychiatric medication is incompatible with pregnancy, if you lost your health insurance, if…if…if any of these things, tough shit for you. Should have kept your legs closed if you weren't prepared to RAISE A CHILD IN ANY CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCE IN THE WORLD!!!
It would be genuinely hilarious that there are people who believe "Don't ever have sex unless you will be absolutely prepared to parent in whatever circumstances you find yourself nine months from now" is a reasonable position, if those people didn't have so much control over reproductive and health policy.
What's rage-inducing about the Exceptioneers is that they obviously haven't given any thought at all to the inconsistency of their position (or spoken seriously to anyone who might inform their opinions with some "facts") if they're willing to concede that being forced to carry to term a pregnancy created by rape can totally fuck you up, but don't understand how being forced to carry to term a pregnancy that you didn't plan and don't want can totally fuck you up, too.
How ridiculously incapable of self-reflection can one be that one is able to acknowledge that rape (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, but the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative?
I'm really hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in Washington making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of a man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.
Undoubtedly the Exceptioneers would be outraged and horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators.
As well they should be. I am horrified to have to make it. But anyone who holds the position that zie should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.
Still. Nothing would please me more than to never again have to worry about someone else having control over what goes into or comes out of my vagina, to never again have to worry about someone who views forcing me into doing something with my body that I don't want to do as an acceptable consequence, as the "just desserts," for behaving in a way they deem irresponsible, or unattractive, or inappropriate for a woman to behave.
The ball's in your court, Exceptioneers.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Liss' Guerrilla Bookstore Reorganization for Dummies, which is filed under "cookbooks."
Recommended Reading:
Echidne: Benignly Neglected?
Andy: More Cases of Papal Negligence Emerge in Sexual Abuse Scandal
Tristero: Priest Accused of U.S. Abuse Still Working in India
Bree: The Growing Trend of Celebrity Weight Loss Program Endorsements
Susie: Life on the Edge
Bethany: Hitchcock Spot
Leave your links in comments...
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.]
Adventures at Barnes & Noble
This weekend, Iain and I were at Barnes & Noble, where I picked up a copy of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, because I can't find my copy (I probably lost it to the same place I lose most of my lost books—lending it to someone), and I haven't read it in a long time and Iain's never read it. It's now more than a century old, and the continued exploitation of workers makes it still-relevant. Depressing.
Anyway, as we were browsing, Iain sort of made a chuckle-gasp noise and then hissed at me, "Lisssssss! Look at this fooking fing!"
He held up the book and made an eesh! face, pointing at the cover art. History's Worst Decisions, featuring the image of a snake coiled around an apple with a bite taken out of it.
Was the worst decision depicted the acquisition of knowledge, or the Creation of Woman, I wondered…? Probably both, amirite, fellas?! HIGH FIVES!
Later, I decided to do some guerilla bookstore reorganization, and carried all three copies of Glenn Beck's Arguing with Idiots into the Humor section—which, not by coincidence, methinks, is directly across from the "Current Affairs" section, which is positively littered with trash from Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, et al.
Liss lift us up where we belong / Where the eagles fly / On a bookshelf high…
I had a momentary pang of guilt about the 10 seconds of extra work I had created for a B&N employee, but then I remembered that I've returned to their rightful place countless misplaced books left on random shelves by lazy shoppers in that store over the years. It ought to be enough karma to ensure that any progressive who discovers that shit will find it hilarious, and any conservative who gets pissed deserves the aggravation.
On Inclusion at Shakesville
Not infrequently, the issue of inclusion/authorship at Shakesville comes up in threads here, or at other blogs, or arrives in my inbox. Typically, criticisms center on my not writing enough on a particular demographic of which I'm not a part or an issue that doesn't directly affect me, or not writing about them/their issue in the right way, or leaving too much of this or that to guest contributors, or not featuring enough guest contributors of a particular marginalized group.
So let me just take a moment to explain again my philosophy on this stuff.
As I once said to Renee regarding what issues still need more attention, "the list is endless. There are so many issues of concern to marginalized people which are all but invisible within mainstream culture—so much 'conventional wisdom' about sex, race, sexuality, gender expression, body size and stature, disability, mental illness, addiction, class, religion (and lack thereof), sexual assault, etc. that needs to be challenged. Any lack of parity in any place among any people means that we've still got work to do."
The truth is, I'm not sure I can talk about anything "enough"—which is not a backhanded way of avoiding all critique, but an honest attempt to address a reality that is true for every single marginalization about which I write. There is a lot of goddamned teaspooning to do.
Saying that doesn't mean I believe I'm above criticism on either the quantity or quality of my blogging on any issue. It means only that I engage in good faith concerns about content at Shakesville, or the lack thereof; if you bring to me a complaint regarding this or that getting less attention than it needs, I likely agree and hope you will work with me to do something about it.
Which brings me to guest posts.
Let me go back to something else I said in that interview with Renee:
I don't find that I have difficulty balancing interests; there's not a finite amount of space at Shakesville, so I don't feel as though anything ever has to be sacrificed in favor of something else, except insomuch as it comes to what I personally have time to cover—although, as regards issues of intersectionality, I'm obviously not the best person to cover every issue, or even most, anyway. I struggle more with trying to find people who are willing to bring their unique perspectives to Shakesville, who can speak to experiences and intersectionalities I simply don't have.
The two relevant ideas there are: I am not always the best person to speak about everything; and: Personal narratives are an extremely powerful bit of teaspooning.
I am immensely grateful to the women and men of color, LGBTQIs, parents, women and men who are differently- or disabled, chronically ill, atypically partnered, non-American, recovering addicts, formerly homeless, abuse survivors, etc. who tell pieces of their stories and share their perspectives at Shakesville. Because marginalized people's stories often aren't told in the mainstream (or told with some fucked-up agenda), it's incumbent upon us to tell our own stories on our own terms wherever we can, to fill that void, to be unrepentant and loquacious raconteurs every chance we get, to talk about our bodies, our struggles, our triumphs, our needs, our lives in every aspect. It's our obligation to create a cacophony with our personal narratives, until there is a constant din that translates into equality, into balance. Making the personal public and political is so important—and I want to use Shakesville toward that objective as best I can.
Part of the reason I can write with a particular passion about feminist issues is because I am a woman, and fat issues because I am fat, and queer issues because I have been in a queer relationship, and sexual assault issues because I am a survivor of multiple sexual assaults. One of the earliest widely-linked posts at Shakesville was my post The Sound of My Voice, in which I came out as a survivor of sexual assault. And one of last year's most widely-linked posts at Shakesville was Shaker Anonymous' post Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers' Choice for Women. Both of those are personal narratives that no one else could have written—and it is impossible to underestimate the difference between someone writing a generic post about rape or adoption and someone talking about her rape or giving up her child for adoption.
I cannot write a post like that about chronic disease, or any disability but my own, or being trans, or being gay, or being a woman of color, or being a man who feels the bootheel of the patriarchy on his neck, or being a dwarf, or any one of a million things, which means if I don't open up this space to people who can, those posts won't exist at Shakesville.
I opened this space and made it a group blog with guest contributors because I am one person with one person's experiences and intersectionalities. I opened it up because I am flawed; I fuck up; I fail; I commit sins of omission; I can't and don't do enough on a variety of issues. I opened it up because I will never be as strong an advocate for your needs as you are—and no one else can tell your story.
I also don't have time to make myself familiar—to the degree of confidence and expertise that I require before I write about something, so I can answer questions that readers will inevitably have on any new subject I introduce—with every issue that someone wants me to cover. I get hundreds of emails every day, and many of them are from people admonishing me to familiarize myself with their issue and get to work on their behalf.
I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me; that's just the reality of running this blog. Lots of people want a piece of my time, and telling me to learn about something doesn't actually create more of it, which is what I need to be able to cover a new (to me) issue.
Issues about which I can write with clarity and confidence are frequently issues in which I've been immersed for years. When I write a post about a particular issue, and someone comments on my ability to perfectly put into words what they've always felt but have never been able to articulate, that's not magic. If innate talent plays any role at all, it's a vanishingly small part compared to the decidedly unsexy role of daily practice and hard work.
When I write about a subject I know inside and out, it shows. And when I write about a subject I don't know inside and out, that shows, too. I don't like writing about things I don't know a hell of a lot about—because I am more likely to get something wrong, inadvertently offend the people most intimately affected, end up being counterproductive to the cause, be generally unhelpful and make a hash of it.
I have no interest in pretending I know everything about everything, which is why I invite people to write in this space with me.
That's not an abdication of responsibility as a feminist or as a progressive. It's just the best I've got to balance my finite output against infinite needs, to facilitate inclusion, to avoid appropriation, and to make available whatever little platform I've got to my allies.
So, please: If you don't see here what you'd like to see, pick up your teaspoon.
[Originally posted in similar form on March 24, 2009.]
Umm...
The link to this Flickr gallery filled with photos of signs at tea party rallies has been floating around the internets for about a week. It's pretty much stuff like this:
I'm far from perfect when it comes to spelling and grammar, so I'm not all that comfortable with sneering at these as examples of stupidity in the tea party movement. (Although I really am boggled by the, as Digby mentions, arrogance displayed in the "Speak English!" signs.) If anything, I think these signs are a fascinating look at how scattered the tea party "goals" are, (Wait, is this about taxes? Or immigration? Or the zomg birth certificate? I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.) and how much racism and sexism lurks beneath the surface.
Anyway.
The creator of this gallery has coined the term "Teabonics" as shorthand for "badly written teabagger signs," and that term is being spread all over the progressive blogosphere.
Seriously? Teabonics? I'm not the only person out there flabbergasted by this fauxgressive bullshit, am I?
"Ticked Off" Protest Tomorrow in NYC
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.
So there's a protest being organized for tomorrow in New York against the Tribeca Film Festival's decision to give "Ticked Off Epithet-That-I'm-Not-Going-To-Repeat With Knives" it's world premiere. I plan to be there, and I hope New York area Shakers can make their way down (bring a candle in memory of Angie Zapata).
Now, over here we've talked about the million and one reasons that this entire project—but most especially, the trailer—its fan-failing-tastic, but I thought I'd review some of the more pernicious defenses of the film that have been floating around the 'Nets of late. Just in case you need to defend against the concerned. (I won't touch upon the normal silencing tactics, like the appeal to the Law of Conservation of Protest or the Razor of Lighten Up, It's a Joke.)
It's a revenge fantasy, and that's good, right? I'm not going to touch on the morality of revenge fantasies (mostly because I've been guilty in that regard myself), but it's important to note two things: First the absolutely despicable use of the real life tragedies of Angie Zapata Jorge Mercado. We've all talked about that. But the trouble doesn't stop there: as Gina notes, director Israel Luna made the film because, essentially, gay revenge fantasies are played out and trans folk are the next in thing:
I didn't want to write about a male gay bashing victim. That's a story we've seen all too often, and I wanted to do something more modern and I thought "Whose story do you never see on the news these days?" It's not gay men—it's transgenders.It seems the word most strongly associated with this film shouldn't be revenge—it's appropriation.
But he says it's part of the culture he knows! And his trans friends use say um, you know, all the time! All that may be true. I myself have known a few trans subcultures that superficially resemble Mr. Luna's mise-en-scene. I'm not even incredibly freaked out about the obvious dragginess of all the trans characters, because there are definitely trans drag queens.
But. This film deliberately invokes trans experience. The trailer mentions a murdered young woman who lived a life nothing like that of the characters in this story. And the truth is, many trans folk don't live a life anything like the life depicted in this film. (Most trans women of my acquaintance wouldn't have a name like Emma Grashen even to do sex work.) The film deliberately conflates trans and drag experience in order to provide the most exploitative titillation possible to the audience—to keep you always aware that these are "really" men, not women.
Well, it's a transploitation film. It's, like, a homage to the blaxploitation films! Only with tra—okay, okay, that word. And here is where we move into the really offensive territory. Folks, the "ploitation" in blaxploitation is there for a reason. Most of the films of that genre were made by white directors, producers, and writers, and furthered a whole host of lazy stereotypes under the thin cover of finally giving African-American actors leading roles. So to use the idea that this is a throwback to a fun genre is to be stupendously clueless.
But wait. It's even worse. Most of the first films of the "blaxploitation" genre were actually made by black people. Movies like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (directed by Melvin Van Peebles), the original Shaft (directed by acclaimed photographer Gordon Parks), and Cotton Comes to Harlem (directed by Ossie Davis) not only were all directed by black people, but were also very different from the cheaply exploitative films that followed in their wake, once they proved that there was an audience eager to watch actors who looked like them on the big screen. Take, for example, Shaft: Beneath its sensationalistic (if often beautifully shot) exterior, there are messages of racial solidarity, standing up to a prejudiced power structure, and perhaps most importantly, an African-American man as a private investigator, post-war cinema's favorite male heroic myth. (And notably, his office isn't uptown in Harlem, it's downtown on Times Square, the metaphorical heart of New York City.)
For Luna's defenders to hide behind the idea that they are making a harmless, campy trans version of "blaxploitation" movies is to ignore the proud origin and subsequent ugly history of the genre. It's not even the contextless cluelessness of, say Tarantino, who at least obviously loves both the films and the people who made them. It's to shortcut the whole idea that stories about a marginalized community should originate in that community.
That's not even hipster irony. That's just being a douchebag.
But trans women are in this movie! Yeah, and Rock Hudson was in a bunch of movies that implied heterosexual marriage was the only path to happiness, and even Nathan Lane played straight for a bunch of years. Given the incredible scarcity of roles for trans actors—I mean, I love Felicity Huffman and all, but the movie had the word trans in the title and the main role was still played by a cis actor?—I'm not surprised that trans people worked on this movie. And more power to them. I'm not in the habit of criticizing the ways that people try to come to terms with their oppression.
But trans people didn't write the film. They didn't produce the film. They didn't direct the film. They didn't edit it afterwards. And they for fuck sure didn't make the trailer. All those have a hell of a lot more influence on the final result than their performance.
And about that word—surely it's okay to use it if you're being... Seriously, don't. And Israel Luna should know better—as somebody who works for the Dallas Voice, he should remember (or they should remind him) about the furor they stirred up last year when they declared that RuPaul had made it okay to use the word tra**y and us poor trans folk should not get our panties in a twist. Or maybe he does remember, because he's enacting the exact same appropriative, inappropriate BS where in people in the gay community get to tell people in the trans community how we should refer to ourselves, present ourselves, and—hi, Christian Soriano!—allow ourselves to be slang expressions for all that is ugly, dowdy, and in poor taste about women.
Well you know what? We're not going to listen. This time we're going to make ourselves heard. Because we're tired of our dead being marginalized, overlooked, and even used as advertising material for a cheap gimmick of a film.
