[Image of a tweet from Lost producer Carlton Cuse reading: "Tonight a new chapter in the season commences."]
OMGOMGOMG
[Image of a tweet from Lost producer Carlton Cuse reading: "Tonight a new chapter in the season commences."]
OMG You Guys
I just woke up in a parallel dimension in which the internet already existed in the 1950's and the archives are still available online!
That must be the explanation for the existence of "6 Reasons Guys Might Think You're Easy," in which gracious and knowledgeable gentleman writer Rich Santos explains to ladies how they can avoid being thought of as "easy" by men, which is, of course, a negative thing because nothing is less attractive in a woman than sexual agency.
That's got to be the explanation. Because the alternative is just too horrifying to contemplate.
[H/T to Shaker Rainbow Brite.]
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.]
In Which I Substitute an Email Conversation with Liss for a Post
elle: Have u seen the U by Kotex commercials?
Here (Transcripts at bottom):
and here:
and this one (from Australia, it turns out) with the actual BEAVER (it took me a moment to get it--don't tell anyone :-):
(not the one I showed list--turns out, these have been running for a while in Australia and there's a bunch of 'em)
Liss: I hadn't seen them! So, my awesome response is... On the one hand: YES. On the other: NO.
LOL.
It's like, yeah, I hate those "my period makes me spin in happy circles with my face to the sun" ads. But tampon makers *just not making them* is sufficient. Mocking them strikes me as just an attempt for women to distance themselves from something which has been, rightly or wrongly, associated with femininity and womanhood. Which comes across as just mocking womanhood.
Blurgh. Or am I overthinking this?
elle: you're not overthinking it at all! That second one especially gave me a similar feeling.
As a sidenote: I wonder if the whiteness of those commercials (backgrounds, clothes, etc.) is mocking the association of white with pure and clean OR just the white-ness of the old commercials. (I already know the answer, don't I?)
And that second commercial, with the "attractive," "racially ambiguous" woman taps into something I've seen black women bloggers and writers discuss, where "racially ambiguous" often serves as something other than/better than "black." I don't have the background to discuss this fully yet, but particularly in the hip hop world, with the racially ambiguous "video vixens," you can see it. Seattle Slim explains a lot more here:Every video or every movie role where a black woman is required seems to go to lighter skinned women. I have no hate towards these women. It makes no sense. I love all of our shades. We are all beautiful. My animosity is to the industry that attempts to pit us against each other and sends the message that anything mixed with white or some other "light-skinned" race is what is acceptable, and even beautiful; full on black is not.
One of the commenters there notes how (black) rappers often rap about their desire for women who are "half" something else.
And I won't even touch the fact that they used the phrase "good hair."
My attempts at transcripts:
Commercial One (Reality Check):
Opens with a young woman sitting in a room, ostensibly being interviewed about her period, while soft music plays in the background.
Woman One: How do I feel about my period? Uhh… We’re like this. (crosses her index and middle fingers)
Cut to a scene of a smiling woman, glancing at butterflies over her shoulder. Back to Woman One.
Woman One: I want to hold really soft things, like my cat.
Cut to a scene of a decidedly unhappy cat. Housecats don’t snarl, I know, but this cat is doing an impression of that. Back to Woman One, who now has her hand over her chest to indicate “emotional,” or something.
Woman One: Makes me feel really pure
Cut to a scene of a woman, dressed in white, releasing butterflies. Back to Woman One.
Woman One: Sometimes, I wanna just run on a beach.
Cut to a scene of a woman running and frolicking on the beach where the waves meet the shore. Back to Woman One.
Woman One: I like to twirl.
Cut to a scene of a woman, twirling in a white dress while clutching flowers. Back to Woman One.
Woman One: Maybe in slow motion.
Cut to a scene of a woman twirling in a white dress on the beach. Back to Woman One.
Woman One: And I do it in my white spandex.
Cut to a scene of a woman, dancing in white spandex. She’s holding a red ball while doing a standing split. Please note: the red spot is in her hands, not in her white-spandex-covered crotch (sorry, couldn’t resist). Back to Woman One.
Woman One: And usually, by the third day, I really just want to dance.
Cut to a scene of three women, dancing randomly. Everyone has on white bottoms. Back to Woman One.
Woman One: The ads on TV are really helpful. Cuz they use that blue liquid.
Cut to a scene of a side by side comparison, in which disembodied hands pour blue liquid on the seats of two pairs of white panties a la the old pad commercials.
Woman One (nodding): And I’m like, “Oh, that’s what’s supposed to happen!”
Screen goes black and the words: “Why Are Tampon Ads So Ridiculous?” appear. Then, boxes of the new U by Kotex products appear with the words “Break the Cycle”
Voiceover: U by Kotex. A new line of pads, tampons, and liners.
Commercial Two (So Obnoxious):
Open on a commercial with a woman, clad in white, walking amongst swirling white curtains.
Woman: Hi, I’m an unbelievably attractive, 18 to 24 year old female. You can relate to me because I am racially ambiguous.
More walking and swirling.
Woman: And I’m in this commercial because market research shows, girls like you love girls like me.
Cut to scenes of her bouncing around in white room with white curtains while wearing a white leotard, then a white cheerleading outfit (complete with white pom-poms).
Woman: (As images of her from several angles flash) Do all these angles make me seem dynamic? (Scene of her blowing bubbles and smiling) Now I’m going to tell you to buy something. Buy the same tampons I use. Because I’m wearing white pants… (The background steadily changes during this time, but it’s always all white) … and I have good hair. (She swings said “good hair.”) You wish you could be me. (said with an attitude and a head snap. Are we supposed to think she’s less racially ambiguous now?)
Screen goes black and the words: “Why Are Tampon Ads So Obnoxious?” appear. Then, boxes of the new U by Kotex products appear with the words “Break the Cycle”
Voiceover: U by Kotex. A new line of pads, tampons, and liners.
Commercial Three (from Australia):
Alarm clock goes off and starts playing a song with the words “New you” sung repeatedly. Camera pans to a dress and necklace on the floor. Camera circles the room long enough for us to identify it as “feminine” (Pink covers, pillow, pink and purple things hanging up, etc). Finally the occupant of the bed is revealed.
IT’S A BEAVER! AS SUBTLE AS THESE ALL CAPS!
Beaver is wearing a sleeping mask and resisting getting up.
Voiceover: Sleep easy with maximum protection. U overnight ultra-thins. For the ultimate care down there.
Beaver’s hand/paw/claw is slapping at the snooze button. A bag of “U” pads rests beside the clock.
Ungodly
[Trigger warning for clergy abuse.]
If someone had asked me if the Catholic Church's institutional sex abuse conspiracy could get any worse, I believe I would have been hard-pressed to come up with an answer—because how could it get any worse? Well. Once again, I despair to report that evil is more vast than my imagination.
Brendan Kiley has written a comprehensive investigative piece for The Stranger, which details the allegations by indigenous Alaskans that the Catholic Church used "their remote villages as a 'dumping ground' for [known pedophile] priests."
On the morning of January 14 in Seattle, Ken Roosa and a small group Alaska Natives stood on the sidewalk outside Seattle University to announce a new lawsuit against the Jesuits, claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in isolated Native villages where they could abuse children off the radar.Roosa, along with his associate Patrick Wall, "a former Benedictine monk who once worked as a sex-abuse fixer for the Catholic Church," know of 345 cases of sexual abuse in Alaska by 28 predator priests, which is a concentration of sexual abuse that is "orders of magnitude greater than Catholic sex-abuse cases in other parts of the United States."
"They did it because there was no money there, no power, no police," Roosa said to the assembled cameras and microphones. "It was a pedophile's paradise."
Kiley's article explains the historical context in which Catholicism came to be such a powerful force in the area, but the former fixer Wall succinctly sums up why the area subsequently became a dumping ground for sexual abusers: The predator priests were sent to the isolated Alaskan villages "to get them off the grid, where they could do the least amount of damage," defined by the Church in terms of its own public relations, not in terms of damage to children.
And the reason that the villages made such a spectacular waste containment site for sex predators is the same reason that the predators found themselves in a "pedophile's paradise":
[T]he villages of Northwest Alaska were only accessible by plane, boat, or dog sled. Many still are. For the most part, they didn't have public schools, cops, or telephones. Many of the houses were one room and lacked food and consistent heat in the below-zero weather. "The perps would soften up their victims with food and warmth," Wall says, "because that's what the kids didn't have. 'It was always warmer in the rectory,' they say. 'There was always food in the rectory. There was always candy.'"I just don't even know what to say about the depravity of the perpetrators, about the callousness of their enablers, who cared more for nurturing and maintaining a public image than about the safety of children. And many adult women, whose victimization is also discussed in this article.
Flo Kenny, a 74-year-old survivor who spent the morning of January 14 in Seattle, participating in a press conference announcing a new lawsuit, began her story thus: "I am Flo Kenny. I am 74 years old. And I've kept silent for 60 years. I am here for all the ones who cannot speak—who are dead, who committed suicide, who are homeless, who are drug addicts. There's always been a time, an end of secrets. This is the time."
May it be so.
[H/T to Shaker Museclio.]
Dear Divorce…
by Safa Samiezade'-Yazd, a writer, a performer, an American-Iranian, a nude art model and a soon-to-be-bride who is currently the author of the blog Naked Lady in a White (Silk) Dress, which looks at the engagement process and wedding culture from the point of view of a burgeoning feminist.
My parents are divorced. They separated when I was twenty-one, and the divorce was finalized about five years later. Worse than that, they had a very unhappy marriage. I remember growing up, knowing as a child that they were completely wrong for each other. I remember the day I realized their marriage was going to end. I was eleven at the time.
It took them ten years to finally end the misery, and by that time, it was old news to me because I had already seen it coming. Yet the fighting is still going on. And the mind games. Even though they live in separate homes and my mom now lives with her boyfriend. Still, sometimes it feels as if my parents are still unhappily married to each other. They keep on fighting over my younger siblings, as if these kids are live collateral for all the broken promises and hurt feelings that still rage between the two.
Their twisted marriage wasn't the only bad one I was raised by. In fact, when you look at all the marriages I grew up around, only one didn't end in divorce. My grandparents, on my mother's side. Theirs was an unconventional one. My grandma lived and raised the kids in St. Louis while my grandpa bounced back and forth every week between home and his job at the Pentagon.
My aunt on my mom's side is divorced. My uncle on my father's side is divorced. Even my father's parents are divorced, which was extremely rare during the Shah's reign in Iran, but the domestic abuse was severe enough that the divorce wasn't actually initiated by my grandmother, but by the state itself.
Most of my parents' friends in St. Louis were very much like them—American wife, Iranian husband. In each marriage, the husband was extremely religious (I did grow up thinking Khomeini was a superhero—that childhood myth has since been debunked), and the wives all converted from their Western upbringing, veiled themselves more severely than most women in Iran do, and some even gave up their birth names. Life would get so confusing, because in the women's sphere, they would be called their American names, and in the men's sphere, they would be called their Arabic names. Even the kids sometimes would go by different names, depending on the context.
I kept the same name, but my behavior was constantly changing in check with wherever I was. In my elementary school, which was about fifty-percent international, I could blend in as one of the other kids, and in my grandparent's house I could act like some vestige of an American kid, but in Iranian circles, I tended to either stick out or keep to myself, mostly because I couldn't keep all the behavioral changes straight. Kids would play tag around the mosque, but because boys and girls weren't allowed to touch each other, we would throw sticks or pebbles to "tag." It was absurd to me.
I remember practicing my violin in private, because playing music was okay with one parent, but to another, it was a ticket straight down the highway to hell.
My father even had a plan for me: Study engineering in college, get married to an Iranian boy of his choosing somewhere between 18 and 22, go to medical school, and then become a three-quarter Iranian baby-pumping housewife. When I was born, my father and his sister actually started orchestrating an arranged marriage between my cousin and myself. My actual engagement isn't acknowledged on that side of my family. Not only is Rene an artist, he's also not Muslim. When we start having children, I'll be pumping out three-quarter Catholic babies.
Slowly the couples began breaking up, and my mom was the last woman in our community to leave her husband. Of course, in each divorce, what everyone fought over were the kids. For the women, it was their maternal birthright to keep them. For the men, it was their paternal entitlement. In some ways, I lucked out, because I was already an adult by the time the custody mess happened, but sometimes, I wonder, because now I have to watch it all as I get ready for my own first marriage.
David Popenoe, a sociology professor at Rutgers University and co-director of the National Marriage Project, wrote:
Marriages of the children of divorce actually have a much higher rate of divorce than the marriages of children from intact families. A major reason for this, according to a recent study, is that children learn about marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents. In the children of divorce, the sense of commitment to a lifelong marriage has been undermined.
In Iran, there is such a thing as a temporary or pleasure marriage. For some women, it's a way to legally work as a prostitute; for some men, it's a way to have premarital sex and feel religiously okay. For some couples, it's the only way they can date and get to know each other before making a lifetime commitment without getting arrested for adultery.
This was how my parents began their relationship. They met in the mosque, went out on a date to see Gandhi, and then started a temporary marriage, I think so that my father could feel okay losing his virginity to an American woman. That night, I was conceived, and my mom was pregnant with me when they finally decided to make their marriage legal or permanent. The reasoning wasn't so much for love, but for obligation and to make my birth legitimate in their eyes.
What followed, of course, was the saga that I call their marriage, with many of its problems blamed on me by my father, because, of course, they wouldn't be in that situation if I weren't born. More kids kept coming, and of course they stayed together, even though they started sleeping in separate bedrooms when I turned fifteen, because good religious Iranian children don't have divorced parents.
The whole dynamic really did a number on me in terms of relationships, and even though I started sneaking around and dating boys when I turned eighteen, I didn't really let myself really feel love for one until my senior year of college. Even then, as wonderful as he was, and as good friends as we still are, the timing was completely wrong, and it wasn't until I met Rene that I realized I had been attracted to guys who were as unavailable as my father was in his marriage. And I dealt with it by making myself just as unavailable.
I was happier in long-distance relationships than I was in local ones. I remember one long-distance relationship where I thought I was falling for the guy, but as soon as I saw him in person, I suddenly was over it and ready to ship him back to New York. Rene was the first guy I dated who actively and assertively pursued me, and I have to admit that every time he wanted me to take our relationship to the next level of commitment, I freaked.
It took a proposal for me to realize that he wanted to share his home with me, even though I was already living with him. Rene gave a great deal of thought into our relationship. At 45, he had other chances to propose or marry other women, but he waited, held out to the point where people were wondering if he would become a lifelong bachelor, because he wanted to make sure that his first marriage would be the right decision.
Why did I freak, and why was I so resistant? I think it's because, with the exception of my grandparents, I grew up around marriage after marriage where commitments fell through, and I began to see promises and vows as temporary fixes to legitimize whatever's going on in your life at that point. I was never really taught what it means to have a relationship where the people want to be committed to each other, not have to be.
I don't talk to my father anymore, but I am still close with my mom, and it's always been a mission of mine not to repeat the mistakes they made. Part of that means I have to visit their unhappy marriage and the disturbing memories that have partially shaped who I am today.
I keep telling myself that my marriage will be different, but let's face it, it's not like my family history really has the greatest track record. It's my greatest fear, to wonder if divorce is somehow genetic in my family, and if I'm going to wind up no different from my parents. I don't know how my father is, but I sometimes see my mom having to justify herself through her relationships now, and I want so badly not to feel like I need to do that in mine. I remember watching how easily she lost her self-identity in my father, and the idea terrifies me, which is probably why I'm so insistent on Rene and I complementing each other, not completing each other.
And yet I wonder—would I be this aware of the implications of commitment and marriage if I weren't raised by those consequences themselves? It's a toss-up sometimes to think if my generation of brides, who grew up around divorce in some matter or another might unconsciously use the immediacy of broken-up marriages as models for their own commitments or consciously as tools of how heavy of a decision their wedding really is.
[Cross-posted.]
You Know...
...David Brooks' last column was quite genuinely abysmal, but this week's might be even worse:
Relax, We'll Be FineA grown-ass man feeling obliged to write for the paper of record, to be read by other grown-ass adults, a column that could be shortened to "Turn that frown upside down!" without losing any of its meaning, is bad enough.
According to recent polls, 60 percent of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction. The same percentage believe that the U.S. is in long-term decline. The political system is dysfunctional. A fiscal crisis looks unavoidable. There are plenty of reasons to be gloomy.
But if you want to read about them, stop right here. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. Because the fact is, despite all the problems, America's future is exceedingly bright.
But even worse is the reality that this educated, wealthy, white, straight, cisgender, thin, able-bodied, neurotypical, highly privileged American man speaks as though every resident of the US will equally benefit from the trends he believes will ensure the country's continued dominance.
When he says, "Relax, We'll Be Fine," what he really means is: "Settle Down, All You Malcontents, Lest You Upset the Apple Cart That Keeps People Like Me Doing Just Fine."
America being the best place it can possibly be for educated, wealthy, white, straight, cisgender, thin, able-bodied, neurotypical, highly privileged men does not de facto mean it's also the best place it can possibly be for an un/der-educated, poor, fat, disabled, trans lesbian of color. That seems like it ought to be obvious, but, as evidenced by Brooks' column, it's anything but.
Cloaked in his privilege of "normalcy"—male is the norm, white is the norm, straight is the norm, etc.—and fully invested in the idea that he is not merely the "normal" human, but a specimen of humanity to which everyone aspires, Brooks can do nothing but blink gormlessly at any suggestion that individual humans don't want to deny their intersectional identities and contort themselves to fit into the world that privileges him.
He doesn't understand (or won't) that the world was designed to his specifications, and trying to fit into his tailored culture is the emotional equivalent of wearing an ill-fitting suit every day for one's entire life.
"This suit which was tailored to my body's measurements fits me just fine! I don't know what your problem is!"
Brooks, like most conservatives and a hell of a lot of liberals and fauxgressives, don't understand that fighting for what's best for "America" (meaning the ideal America for privileged men) isn't the same thing as fighting for the equality of marginalized people.
In fact, they are frequently in direct opposition.
And Brooks' presumption that being "fine" for him does not take into account that "fine" is subjective—and even if it's true that America itself will be "fine," America rarely gives all its members equal consideration.
When we hear that something will be good for "everyone," it generally means it's going to be good for educated, wealthy, white, straight, cisgender, thin, able-bodied, neurotypical, highly privileged men—and hopefully lots of other people, too! The problem with this paradigm is that it's usually espoused by the people with the most existing freedom and opportunity, who are looking to procure more for themselves, or restore something they've lost, or protect that which they are anxious about losing.
This is the social counterpart to the conservatives' beloved theory of trickle-down economics: Make everything as splendid as possible for those at the top and the benefits will "trickle down" to everyone below.
Well, it's bullshit when we're talking about tax cuts, and it's bullshit when we're talking about equality and opportunity.
Great, swell, awesome that America will be "fine" and everyone like David Brooks will be "fine," as if that matters to people who won't be "fine."
As if it matters to the people who aren't fine now, and never have been.
"Relax—you're still going to be treated like a second-class citizen!"
Forgive me if I don't join in your "luscious orgy of optimism," Mr. Brooks. You privileged wankstain.
The Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report – T100406
Time for another Teaspoon Report! Why? Cause I want to! Yay!
Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
ô,ôP
NQDTR Discussion Thread – T100406
Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
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."
