Today in Rape Culture

[Trigger warning.]

So. A singer named Kiely Williams, who used to be one of The Cheetah Girls ("Who are The Cheetah Girls? I'm OLD!"—Melissa McEwan), released a single earlier this year called "Spectacular," about which two things are notable: 1. It's terrible. 2. It's about (what is colloquially known as) a date rape.

Except, hey, who cares about being raped if the "sex is spectacular," amirite?

Last night I was drunk / I don't remember much / But what I do constant pictures / That's how gone I was / But he was tall and he was buying / So I gave him a trying / Said he was built like a stallion / And the man wasn't lying / [Refrain] Last I remember / I was face down, ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off / Even though I'm not sure of his name / He could get it again if he wanted / 'Cause the sex was spectacular / The sex was spectacular / The sex was spectacular / The sex was spectacular / sing-songy sex noises [End Refrain] / So it was the morning after / I couldn't get home faster / Doing the walk of shame / In the same clothes from yesterday / I think he pulled a track out / When he was blowing my back out / What was I drinking / I can't believe I blacked out / [Refrain] / You can say what you want but / You can call me a slut but / What he did to me last night felt so good / I must have been on drugs / I hope he used a rubber / Or I'mma be in trouble / Promise I don't remember / Except for rolling over / Give it to me, give it to me / Ooh baby what a ride ride / Oh ride ride / So smooth like the beats / I like the heat / Ooh baby what a night night / Right right / [Refrain]

Following the song's release, some fuddy-duddy hysterics pointed out the song was sort of enormously inappropriate with its implicit message that rape is defined by whether "the sex" was hot rather than the presence or absence of consent, and, because I am the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington, you know I'm high-fiving them for what is obviously just an attempt to deliberately misconstrue a PERFECTLY NICE SONG in order to ruin the life of its performer because she's not performing family-friendly Disney songs anymore, especially when she's the voice of a generation (of sluts, of which she isn't one).

Kiely isn't going to stand for that nonsense!

So, it has been quite a day. [laughs] You know, um, the "Spectacular" video, I think, has made quite a splash, to say the least. But, since everyone else has given their two cents, I thought it was time for me to share mine.

First, I just want to say: No! This video is not condoning date rape. [gestures and makes an expression like "What the fuck? How could anyone come to THAT conclusion?!"] The song isn't condoning date rape. [shrugs] It's just not. I really just want to say that, you know, sometimes, to me, music can be as simple as, as a story relayed, or imagined, or elaborated on. Not every song has a, a greater message to the world. Not every song is "We Are the World"! [laughs] It's a great song, but sometimes a song can just be "I kissed a girl and I liked it." [shrugs] That's great, too, you know?

I think a lot of the confusion—and maybe it's not confusion; it's more this [pauses; furrows brow]…this kind of outrage—it, I think it stems from my years being a Cheetah Girl. So, let's address that: Yes, I still believe in girl power. Yes, I still believe that young women should follow their dreams and stay true to themselves and their friends. But I also do know a lot of twenty-somethings who go out and get a little bit too drunk and go home with a guy whose name they can't quite remember. [makes "that's the unfortunate truth" face] It's not my idea of a perfect Saturday night, no, but it does happen. A lot. And maybe it's something that we all do need to talk about more.

Look, if you don't like the video, that's fine. You don't have to; it's a free country. But don't shoot the messenger. All right. All love, guys. [blows kiss]

Well, there are also two notable things about this video: 1. Kiely is as terrible an actress as she is a singer. 2. It confirms that the rape culture is alive and well, including all its associated silencing techniques like my all-time favorite, "Art exists in a void."

It would be hilarious, were it not so tragic, that she invokes Katy Perry's loathsome gay-dabbling anthem as evidence of a song without cultural significance, despite the fact that its supporters hold it up as evidence of LGB solidarity and its detractors hold it up as evidence of straight performers who casually appropriate aspects of being gay in a manner that ultimately reinforces the idea that being gay is merely a "lifestyle." There's almost no one who regards the controversial song as having no message, or impact.

And only after mounting the argument that her song is just a song—geez!—she then veers wildly in the other direction, arguing that she's speaking TRUTH about young women's lives, even though she isn't one of those women, hell no, and maybe we should be having an important conversation about the issue she addresses in her song that totally doesn't have a message.

WHY ARE YOU TAKING THIS SONG SO SERIOUSLY WHEN YOU SHOULD BE OUT HAVING SERIOUS CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE SERIOUS ISSUE IN MY SONG THAT I DON'T WANT YOU TO TAKE SERIOUSLY EXCEPT WHEN I'M TRYING TO DEFLECT CRITICISM ABOUT HOW IT DOESN'T TAKE THE ISSUE OF RAPE SERIOUSLY?! WHICH YOU SHOULD!

All of these logical contortions to avoid looking reality in the face and admitting: Fuck, my single is a super-heinous song about rape. I'm so sorry.

Because her song isn't, after all, about a "twenty-something who goes out and gets a little bit too drunk and goes home with a guy whose name she can't quite remember." Her song is about a woman who "dozed off" and "blacked out" and "must have been on drugs" because she can't even remember whether the man she was with used a condom. That's not a booze-fueled one-night-stand. That's a rape.

Even if someone is sober enough to consent and gives enthusiastic consent for sexual activity (an issue around which the song skirts), continuing to "have sex" with a sleeping or unconscious person is rape. Consent can be withdrawn at any point during a sexual act, and ergo the ability to withdraw consent is part of a consensual sex act. Consent isn't an on-off switch. Consent is an active entity.

The idea that saying "yes" means saying yes to everything no matter what happens is a narrative of the rape culture.

Partners are present. Once they cease to be present, they are no longer partners, but victims.

This is what is described in "Spectacular." And no one needs to look for a deeper meaning to find that what's described in the song is rape. This isn't about trying to extricate a "greater message" from a "simple" pop song, as Kiely argues her critics are doing. It's right there in the lyrics.

Kiely was right about one thing, though: What happens in the song does happen a lot. To my endless grief and regret.

[Via Videogum.]

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Malcolm McLaren: "Buffalo Gals"

Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols and all-around musical guru, died of cancer at his home yesterday in New York. He was 64. RIP, Malcolm.

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Have I Ever Mentioned That I Hate Newt Gingrich?

Okay, I may have mentioned it once or twice or twelve thousand times.

The former Speaker of the House, who oversaw 1994's Contract with America and the subsequent Republican-led witch-hunt of President Clinton, is a presumed Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential race, and he appears to have begun his campaign at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference yesterday.

AP—Gingrich: Gingrich: Obama is 'most radical president ever':

Gingrich reminded conservative activists why he was one of the nation's most polarizing leaders in the 1990s, opening the Southern Republican Leadership Conference with a biting assessment of Obama's policies.

"The most radical president in American history has now thrown down the gauntlet to the American people: 'I run a machine. I own Washington and there's nothing you can do about it,'" Gingrich said. He urged his fellow Republicans to stop what he called Obama's "secular, socialist machine."

Would that Obama were the most radical president in American history, and not the second coming of Lyndon Johnson.

CBS—Newt Gingrich: We Need a President, Not an Athlete:

"What we need is a president, not an athlete," Gingrich said during a question and answer period after his speech. He added: "Shooting three point shots may be clever, but it doesn't put anybody to work."

Mm-hmm. That's definitely something he'd say about a white president. And big words coming from a guy who (seriously) took to the podium for his speech to (I shit you not) "Eye of the Tiger."

Salon—Gingrich: Say yes to government shutdowns!:

The theme of Newt Gingrich's speech Thursday night at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference was supposed to be "the party of yes." Republicans, tarred for a year as knee-jerk obstructionists, should instead talk about what they're for. "There are many things that we can say yes to," the former House speaker told his audience.

But the plan that Gingrich got the most applause from, as he tried to rally a few thousand GOP activists to say "yes," involved just saying no in a different way. "When we win control of the House and Senate this fall, stage one of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican Congress in January that simply refuses to fund any more," he said. ... In other words, shut down the government.

...That won't be all the new GOP says "yes" to, though. "A Republican Congress and Republican president in January 2013 will repeal every radical bill passed by this administration," he said. And once that's done, they'll get around to cutting taxes, deregulating commerce, encouraging more public prayer and shrinking government at every level from the local school board to the federal bureaucracy. (And also cutting benefits for the poor: "I'm tired of finding new ways to help people who aren't working; I want to find ways to help people who are working.")

That is an actual quote from his actual speech: "I'm tired of finding new ways to help people who aren't working; I want to find ways to help people who are working."

I don't know if I've ever seen a more shameless, unapologetic, naked enthusiasm for social Darwinism from a presumed presidential candidate.

Gingrich just explicitly advocated a job policy based on the theory of survival of the fittest, but Obama's the radical. Okay.

Maude on Seven, I really hate this guy.

[Related Reading: Call Me Citizen Asshole.]

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Stupak to Retire

Buh-bye. And after all the other bullshit drama he's caused, he now leaves his seat in play for a possible Republican takeover.

Not that anyone would be able to tell the difference.

[H/T to Shaker SamanthaB.]

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Open Thread

Hosted by the one and only Trader Vic's Mai-Tai.

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Update: Paws Here

Just a very short update to yesterday's post about the animal shelter in Edinburgh: I heard this morning from (it's so hard not to call her a plucky heroine!) Rachel, who wrote the letter. She said they'd had a really wonderful response to the post, that she and her volunteers were feeling much more optimistic - and stronger - today because of your help, Shakers.

Well-teaspooned, folks. You make me proud to be associated with you.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Quixotess, via email: When in your life have two wrongs made a right (or two failures made a success)?

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Blog Note

Yup. Disqus is messed up. Not showing the correct number of comments, and the threads are ignoring preferred settings (e.g. "Oldest First," chosen in the drop-down menu at the top of a thread).

That's not something we can control, but we've got a help ticket open with Disqus, and hopefully it will be resolved soon.

My apologies, and thanks for your patience.

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Daily Kitteh

Rrrrroooowwwrrrr! Box, I have you! You are mine!

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Quote of the Day

"I could give a flying crap about the political process. We're an entertainment company."—Glenn Beck, in a Forbes profile of his media empire, which is currently bringing in $32 million annually.

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Bravo, CNN: Still Bringing Us the Finest Nooz

Actual Headline: Suspect in Pelosi threats case weeps at court hearing.

Actual Opening Paragraphs:

A man accused of threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wept Thursday as he talked to his attorney before a federal court hearing.

Gregory L. Giusti, 48, was arrested Wednesday in San Francisco, California, where Pelosi's home district is located, according to FBI spokesman Joseph Schadler.

No further details were immediately available about the case.

No further details?!—What a copout! Was he sniffling? Was his nose running? Did he use a tissue, or did someone offer him a handkerchief? I NEED FURTHER DETAILS ABOUT THE WEEPING, CNN!

In all seriousness, I point out that this terrorist's weeping has been turned into an important news item for a reason: It further serves the narrative that each of these Totally-Not-Terrorists of the American Rightwing are independent actors, whose motivations formed in solitude, their actions exclusively attributable to lunacy. Men who cry, of course, are axiomatically unstable, each tear a wet little drip of evidence of the mental illness that is the exclusive source of their behavior.

It's a cunning little potion of sexism and disablism, delivered stealthily in an unmarked package, designed to assure you don't worry; it's only a few bad apples; pay no attention to the swelling indication that there's a dark ideology on the rise, fueling hatred and justifying extremism and tacitly encouraging violence…

Just look at this hapless, crazy loser. He's crying.

The media believes its purpose (and the government agrees) is to quell the hysterics and alarmists who shout that such men are not created in a void, by representing those men as silly characters. Pitiable, even.

Which make them sympathetic to other men like them.

The media creates rightwing martyrs, in its effort to discredit the left. And the beat goes on…

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Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"

[Background here; also see here.]

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.]

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Seen

For those who can't see the image, it's a car window written with that paint that is usually reserved for JV Volleyball teams and Just Married announcements.

It reads "I Heart Vag".

Go team!

[Cross-posted.]

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Patrick McCollum & the "Five Faiths" Rule

by Shaker Michelle, a 21-year-old feminist/heathen/writer/recent transplant to Austin.

Via Jason at The Wild Hunt, I learned about Wiccan chaplain Patrick McCollum, who is currently engaged in a battle to overturn California's exclusionary chaplains hiring practice:

A case coming before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals could end up having major legal ramifications for all religious minorities in the United States. Wiccan chaplain Patrick McCollum has been fighting for years to overturn the State of California's "five faiths policy", which limits the hiring of paid chaplains to Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Native American adherents. While McCollum has suffered setbacks in his quest, with a California federal district court ruling in early 2009 that he had no standing to bring his suit, he recently gained support on appeal from several civil and religious rights groups who argue that his case should be heard.

...While decisions made so far have focused only on whether McCollum has standing as a taxpayer or non-inmate to bring his suit, a new Amicus Curiae filed by the National Legal Foundation, on behalf of a conservative activist organization called WallBuilders, argues that McCollum has no standing because modern Pagans aren't guaranteed the same Constitutional rights and protections as Christian or monotheist citizens.

It's important to note that, even before the amicus was filed, the CDCR was making the same argument:

[T]he State's attorney general's office, has made the argument that religion in California is two-tiered, and that the five state faiths (the first tiered faiths) are afforded all of the equal rights and protections granted under the Constitution, but that all other faiths including Pagans, are second tier ... and are only afforded lesser rights, similar to one another. It is this concept that Pagans and other minority faiths are somehow less endowed, that I am fighting to overcome.

In the same interview, Mr. McCollum talks about some of the abuse he's gone through as a Wiccan chaplain, in government institutions and at the hands of government officers. Descriptions of some of the events may be triggering.

When I first encountered this story, my first thought was to spread the word a bit. I proceeded to post about the story on a forum I frequent, and the arguments I encountered are enclosed below, for your entertainment and head-desking.

The first responder proceeded to mansplain to me about how hysterical I was, along with telling me that he doesn't care if prisoners are discriminated against, and arguing that this is not a case of religious discrimination, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even aside from the treatment of the prisoners, the current ruling limits the hiring of paid chaplains to the "five faiths," so a chaplain outside of the five faiths cannot be hired, no matter how qualified they are.

Another poster said she thought this ruling sounded wrong, but she didn't know what paganism was, at all. I explained that paganism is extremely hard to define, as it's an umbrella term, but generally consists of religions that are not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, that do have a reverence for the natural world, and that self-identify as being pagan; that pagans can be duotheists, monotheists, hard or soft polytheists, pantheists, animists, or people who regard the gods as metaphors for natural forces and changing seasons. Very broad term, is my point.

She responds with (paraphrased, but only slightly) "Oh. Well, now that I know that, why can't the Native American chaplain just do pagans too? They all sound the same."

You can't make this shit up. It's okay to have a different chaplain for Protestants and Catholics, but all those other weird religions? They're all the same!

Obviously, that's incredibly insulting to everyone involved. Even aside from the (I would hope) obvious issues with that statement, there's the existent tension between some practitioners of Native American religions and members of some pagan circles in which there has been rampant appropriation of Native culture.

And then there was my favorite, who started off with the argument that that theoretically Christian chaplains should be able to counsel pagans correctly (really? we all know how well THAT would work out in the majority of cases). There was also the "we should all just be able to get along and hold hands and sing kumbaya because aren't all of our religions really the same" refrain. Um, no, and also, way to miss the point.

When I mentioned the abuse Mr. McCollum suffered, along with the vandalizing of the Air Force Academy's worship center for Earth-based religions, she reponded by playing the "whoever treated him like that obviously weren't real Christians" card, followed by the "I have New Age, Wiccan, and Egyptologist friends!" card.

Yes, folks: Egyptologists. Obviously, here we have an expert. Also, this is after making it abundantly clear that pagan =/= Wiccan and that many pagans find that attitude that we're all the same frustrating. I need to make a bingo card, I think.

We are, thankfully, making progress in America with the acceptance of pagans. There's the aforementioned Air Force Academy worship center, as well as the New Jersey holiday ruling - but obviously & unfortunately, we have a long way to go.

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I Write Letters

Dear Jeffrey Zaslow,

If you're going to write a retrofuck gender essentialist article about the unique golden specialness of male friendships, at least have the decency to admit you're not talking about "men," but about a specific cross-section of straight men.

Because, frankly, in the year 2010, this kind of bullshit is just unconscionable:

[I]t's a mistake to judge men's interactions by assuming we need to be like women. Research shows that men often open up about emotional issues to wives, mothers, sisters and platonic female friends. That's partly because they assume male friends will be of little help. It may also be due to fears of seeming effeminate or gay.

See what you did there? Gay men are thus defined as not actually being Men at all, but some other category altogether that Men fear being thought a part of.

Wow. I hope you are just a lazy writer and not a terrible person!

Love,
Liss

P.S. It's weird how your entire premise falls apart if you include the experiences, typically including strong friendships with women, of gay men, huh? I'm sure that's just a coincidence!

Cc. Anna N.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Oasis: "Whatever"

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At Last

Know what's better than a three-ring circus...? A three-ring circus with TWO ringleaders! Especially two incendiary, mendacious, opportunistic, authoritarian, kyriarchy-enforcing lady ringleaders who are also TOTES HOT!

Two of the country's most popular Republicans, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, teamed up Wednesday for a rollicking campaign rally that targeted President Obama as weak on national security and doomed to a single term.

...Several thousand people showed up to see Bachmann and Palin, both famous for their fiery populism and ability to rile opponents. Darlings of "tea party" conservatives, the women were appearing together for the first time, and they welcomed the crowd's embrace. Palin headlined a fundraiser for Bachmann later in the day.

The rally was a lively assault on Democrats in Congress and the White House. The emcee, talk radio host Chris Baker, drew cheers and laughter when he said the party in power in Washington is a "lying, thieving ... bunch of commies."

...[Bachmann] reminded another audience recently of her 2008 comment that Obama might have "anti-American views," declaring, "I said I had very serious concerns that Barack Obama had anti-American views, and now I look like Nostradamus."

...Many in the audience wore buttons with side-by-side images of Palin and Bachmann. One man's a sweatshirt had an image of Mount Rushmore and the words "Right Wing Extremist: Guess I'm in Good Company."

Betty Soban, an admiring constituent of Bachmann's, said: "My family left Germany because of Hitler and socialized medicine. I see it happening here." Important to her, she said, are "freedom of ownership. Freedom of our guns. Freedom of having babies."

By which, of course, she means the freedom to force other women to have babies.

That sounds like a real fun event. It's too bad I couldn't be there, but I was busy advocating for the equality of all women, from which Palin and Bachmann benefit even as they trade on being rightwing tokens who demean the very activism that has afforded them the public platform on which they bask in the luxury of their disdain.

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Paws Here, Edinburgh

Just a quick note to introduce the topic from me, and then I'll get straight to the message. A young woman who runs an adoption centre/ animal shelter in Edinburgh, Scotland with her partner (and some other very dedicated volunteers), has decided to take up her teaspoon and begin advocating for change in a public way, and thinking she's got a great thing going and wanting to support it, I bethought me to bring over a letter she's written to a local politician beginning a campaign to close down the rodent and rabbit "mills" in Britain, as the puppy mills were closed a few years ago.

Among her good works is a dedication to providing a home for animals whose adopters can't care for them for various reasons, specifically including regular contact with the social work agencies in her region, giving shelter to animals whose adopters must go into care or hospital.

If you have the wherewithal to help her out in any way, I'd call it a mighty teaspoon wielded for those who don't have the voice/power/knowledge to argue for themselves - which is pretty much a good chunk of what we do here, y'know?

A warning for the sensitive of stomach: Rachel pulls no punches in her letter, including somewhat graphic (but appropriate, I think) descriptions of some of the sadder cases she has to deal with.

Dear Fred Mackintosh,

My name is Rachel, I run an independent animal shelter in Morningside which focuses particularly on rabbits and rodents, and today, as with most days, I'm worried.

As usual we are at full capacity. 20 rabbits here, more in foster homes, 10 on a waiting list to come in. All the shelters, SSPCA and independent, are full of rabbits. We've had word that a rabbit rescue in East Lothian has had to close down under the pressure. It's something we can well understand.

Yesterday two more rabbits were brought in by a young family to be rehomed. The father fills out our Rabbit Welfare Association survey, and puts three hesitant, almost embarrassed ticks in the boxes marked “bought from a pet shop”, “bought for a child” and “child lost interest”. The ticks are the last in a long line of other ticks from other families who have decided that the same boxes apply to them. We hear this so often that it is becoming some kind of horrific joke around here. This is happening daily. Rabbits live for 10-12 years. People buy them for kids and give them up within a year. It is not difficult to see that there is a major problem here. The rabbits will have to be spayed before we can rehome them. We're lucky, very lucky. A good small animal vet (a rare thing) has agreed to give us much reduced charity prices for having these animals spayed, neutered, vaccinated and treated there. So the operation for these rabbits will cost us £130. Vaccinations will be more. We rehome a rabbit for a £30 donation. You can already see the problem. In animal welfare we have a saying, “it is impossible to breed, keep and sell animals ethically and make a profit.” Pet shops and breeding mills are making a profit from breeding and selling animals. What does that imply?

We take down the rabbits' details and reassure the family that we only rehome to the best possible homes, that we do home checks, have application forms for adoption, never split up bonded pairs, and regularly turn down people who we do not believe will be suitable pet owners. We tell them to contact us any time to find out how the bunnies are doing. We know from experience that we will probably never hear from them again.

Rabbits are bigger than you might think from looking at the tiny baby bunnies in pet shops where they are often weak, too young to be weaned, wrongly gendered, ill, poorly bred and sold to anyone. Today I have to take one of our bigger rabbits to the vet for ongoing treatment for his bed sores. I want you to stop for a moment and think about how an otherwise healthy animal comes in to an animal shelter with gaping, infected sores on his feet and underbelly. It is from being kept in a hutch too small for him to even move, on dirty, urine-soaked bedding, for his entire life. The vet students from the local veterinary school come here for a week at a time to learn about small animal husbandry, and we have one here this week as well as a disadvantaged teenager who is getting work experience through a government scheme to help her and other young people like her to find work, and one of our regular volunteers. I don't know how I'd get through today without them.

Part way through the day another rabbit is brought in. Pretty soon we realise that something is badly wrong – that this is one of those cases where owners bring in a pet because the animal is ill and they do not want to pay for veterinary care. They are too ashamed to tell us this most of the time, and often it is too late for us or our vets to do anything but make them comfortable. We do what we can. We try to give their last few hours the peace, dignity and freedom from pain that were missing from their lives. This rabbit doesn't look as bad as some, though, and could be in with a chance. Another trip to the vet. There will be permanent partial paralysis of the hind quarters and bunny will have to be medicated for life, making it a near certainty that he will never be adopted. A full diagnosis will be made in a week's time, when the pain killers have had some effect and he has settled down in this new environment. X-rays will be needed. We will need to raise hundreds of pounds in a week, on top of our normal bills and costs. I let our volunteers know that this is the situation – it is not a new one.

The end of the day comes and I am still worried. Today we rehomed one hamster. It is not enough. We are running low on hay, relying on donated bags. What will happen if we run out? We try to raise money to fund the work we do by selling pet products – dog food, hamster cages, cat litter and so on. But our shelves are nearly bare because we simply do not have the funds to pay for an order of products. A bill from the waste disposal people. A bill for the license. Hundreds of pounds that we don't have, that even if we did have should be spent on x-rays for that bunny today that drags his hind legs across his cage to the food dish in excruciating pain. I give him his pain medication. I take a last-minute phone call, and add more rabbits to the waiting list for spaces here.

And, despairing, I am thinking one thing. Why are breeding mills and pet shops still producing and selling these animals like so many toys? Puppy mills are, thankfully, a thing of the past. Yet rabbits are the most neglected pet in Britain, according to the SSPCA and the Rabbit Welfare Association, and are still being mass produced in rabbit and rodent mills like the Essex Breeding Centre, and sold to absolutely anyone by pet shops and superstores. We have had pets brought in by social workers that were sold to people with extreme learning difficulties who cannot even look after themselves. Guinea pigs that are kept in hamster cages. Rabbits belonging to children who neglected to feed them until they were starved to the point of death. Rats tortured by having their toes cut off repeatedly. Pets suffering such extreme psychological trauma from their abuse and neglect that they never recovered. These are not isolated incidents! This is happening every single day. This is the reality of my working life. Rabbits are the third most popular pet in Britain, yet shelters are so full of them that some are having to close down under the pressure. The current system is not working, and trying to police the pet owners is nearly impossible. The problem needs to be fixed at the source.

I don't know how you can help. I just know that you CAN help. You've not gotten to where you are without being a resourceful person – a person who can make things happen. Please do what you can to get this issue heard and dealt with. I know what it's like to feel like the problem is insurmountable – it's something I have to deal with every day, that hollow feeling that it is too much, that we will never make a difference. But politicians and animal welfare workers have this in common: we have the attitude that no matter what the odds, no matter how tiring or thankless the effort, we have to try to make a difference because if we don't, who will?

There's a time when we have to stand up against obvious injustice and give our voices to those who have none. That time is now.

Thank you for your time,

Rachel Plummer.

-=-=-

The shelter's website is here, and they have a community on LJ at paws_here. They can be reached by e-mail at pets@pawshereedinburgh.co.uk.

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Fun with Contemptible Dichotomies

So. Lauren Slater has written an article for Self magazine so awesome that both MSNBC and AOL reprinted it. The article asks the very important question: "Would You Rather be Fat and Happy or Thin and Sad?"

From the perspective of a happy (and happy-go-lucky) fat woman, that question is so absurd I can hardly believe anyone asks it. That people do, with seriousness, reminds me once again why being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery.

The associated poll at AOL is yet further reminder:

People would rather be thin and miserable than look like me and be happy. Well. I would take that more personally if I didn't understand that it's because so many people can't imagine the possibility of looking like me and being happy, because they know the power of their own hostile prejudice, at the blunt end of which they wouldn't want to try to live a happy life.

[H/Ts to Shakers Molliecat and SamanthaExplosion.]

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Hosted by Green River soda. (And two glasses of water.)

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