This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder* to donate to Shakesville.
Asking for donations** is difficult for me, partly because I've got an innate aversion to asking for anything, and partly because these threads are frequently critical and stressful. But it's also one of the most feminist acts I do here.
So. Here's the reminder.
You can donate once by clicking the button in the righthand sidebar, or set up a monthly subscription here. We first made the Subscribe to Shakesville page available last March, which means most of the subscriptions are running out and have to be renewed if you want to keep your subscription active.
Let me reiterate, once again, that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. Aside from valuing feminist work, the other goal of fundraising is so Iain and I don't have to struggle on behalf of the blog, and I don't want anyone else to struggle themselves in exchange. There is a big enough readership that neither should have to happen.
I also want say thank you, so very much, to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am profoundly grateful—and I don't take a single cent for granted. I've not the words to express the depth of my appreciation, besides these: This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.
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* I know there are people who resent these reminders, but there are also people who appreciate them, so I've now taken to doing them every other month, in the hopes that will make a good compromise.
** Why I ask for donations is explained here.
[Trigger warning for violence and extreme fat hatred.]
Dear Telegraph India:
No, Naveen Kumar did not "burn his wife alive because she had grown too fat." Naveen Kumar burned his wife alive because he is a fat-hating murderous fuckhead.
Also: The rates of obesity in Andhra Pradesh are totally irrelevant. But the rates of domestic abuse certainly would have been appropriate to include.
Fatly Yours,
Liss
cc. Shaker Trabb's Boy and Bri.
[Trigger warning for wordplay that includes imaginary violence.]
Liss: So…Nicolas Cage has reportedly bought himself a 9-foot-tall pyramid-shaped tomb in a New Orleans cemetery to be his final resting place. Like ya do.
Deeky: LOL!
Liss: I just saw TMZ's headline about it, and, even though they're the devil, this is hilarious: "Nic Cage Buys Pyramid—To Be Dead In."
Deeky: Brilliant. Of course, if I were writing the headline, I'd have figured out a way to refer to Cage as a "National Treasure."
Liss: LOLOLOLOLOL!!! "The Family Man" and "National Treasure" Nicolas Cage Proves He Is Still "Wild at Heart" by Purcharing a Pyramid to be "Trapped in Paradise" Once "The Weather Man" up in the Sky Decides It's "Bringing Out the Dead" Time and Delivers the "Kiss of Death" and Possibly Also a "Deadfall," or, Failing That, Ripping His "Face/Off" with "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" or Hitting Him Over the Head with "The Rock," But in Any Case Tells Cage His Time Is up and He's "Gone in 60 Seconds" and Has Moved on to the "City of Angels" and Become a "Ghost Rider," So Let's All Hope Cage Doesn't Get a "Vampire's Kiss" and Gets to Use His Death Pyramid, and, by the way, "It Could Happen to You!"
Deeky: LOLOLOL! "The Family Man" and "National Treasure" Nicolas Cage Proves He Is Still "Wild at Heart" by Purcharing a Pyramid to be "Trapped in Paradise" Once "The Weather Man" up in the Sky Decides It's "Bringing Out the Dead" Time and Delivers the "Kiss of Death" and Possibly Also a "Deadfall," or, Failing That, Ripping His "Face/Off" with "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" or Hitting Him Over the Head with "The Rock," But in Any Case Tells Cage His Time Is up and He's "Gone in 60 Seconds" and Has Moved on to the "City of Angels" and Become a "Ghost Rider," So Let's All Hope Cage Doesn't Get a "Vampire's Kiss" and Gets to Use His Death Pyramid, and, by the way, "It Could Happen to You" (Con Air).
Later, during a conversation about the cost of living…
Deeky: If I can't get a new job for at least as much as I'm making now, I may as well just sit my ass on your couch forever and not work at all. I mean, become your houseboy.
Liss: You can get a job in Chicago and commute with Iain every morning!
Deeky: LOL! And we could sing "My Baby Takes the Morning Train..." every morning.
Liss: On the way home, you two can sing "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves. When you take POWER LUNCHES together, you can sing "My Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)" by Cory (Heart).
Deeky: LOLOLOLOL!! Cory (Heart) (Con Air.)
Liss: P.S. That was Timbuk3. Not Corey Hart. He sang the one about wearing sunglasses at night. So many songs about sunglasses in the 80s!
Deeky: It's not like there was anything else going on. P.S. I love songs with parentheses. Did you know that John Parr sang the theme song from "The Running Man"? It's called "(Restless Heart) Running Away With You."
Liss: I did not know that. I love songs with parentheses, too. Especially when they're part of some line of the refrain repeated a thousand times in a song. "(I Will Always) Be There For You" or some bullshit. Really? That parenthetical is necessary? Are you sure?
Deeky: Wasn't every New Kids song like that? Their best was "(I'll Be) Loving You (Forever)" because you can never have too many parentheses.
Liss: Oh Donnie Wahlberg, how I loved you (Con Air).
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky's Giant Exfoliating Gloves.
Recommended Reading:
Larisa: What did Hank Paulson know and when did he know it?
Maha: Rackets and Racketeers
Thea: Torry Hansen & the Adoption Disruption Narrative; Getting Better, Still Needs Work
Abby Jean: Dr. Drew – Stop Policing Other People!
Andy: SLDN's Aubrey Sarvis 'Disturbed' by Reports That White House is Lobbying Congress Against 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Repeal This Year
And Happy Blogiversary to Cara at The Curvature!
Leave your links in comments...
From one of our favorite repeat offenders, Psychology Today, comes a trenchant-as-hell question from Dr. Leonard Sax, "physician, psychologist, and author of Girls on the Edge: the Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls, which will be published next month by Basic Books" (heh):
Are there so many girl-girl couples out there [these days] because that's truly who they are - or because the guys are such losers?Fannie offers an alternative view in response:
Here's a thought, maybe "girls" who have "girl" partners do so for reasons that have little or nothing to do with boys and men.Another radical thought from the intersection of the radical gay and radical feminist agendas.
by Shaker Maud
[Trigger Warning: This story is potentially extremely distressing to people who are not protected by the privileges of legally recognized marriage, i.e. unmarried partners, especially gay partners, who have done everything in their power to protect their legal rights as partners, yet remain at the mercy of bureaucrats when they become elderly and/or in need of medical care because of disease or disability.]
Thanks to Onetimeposter, who left a comment in Sunday's open thread about this story at The Bilerico Project's site.
Clay, 77, and Harold, 88, had shared their lives for twenty years. They had prepared legal documentation to protect their rights as individuals and partners. Both had prepared wills, medical directives and powers of attorney, naming one another in each case. Then Harold fell, and needed to be hospitalized. Apparently hospital personnel refused to recognize Clay as Harold's family and legally-designated carer/advocate, and contacted county social services, who did likewise and took over significant decision-making for both men's lives, separated them, and essentially incarcerated the two men in separate nursing homes, despite the fact that Clay was healthy, and not in need of such a placement. Three months later, Harold died.
In the meantime, the county went to court to gain financial decision-making power for Harold, lied to the court by representing Clay as merely Harold's roommate, and auctioned off their joint possessions, presumably to recoup costs for their care in these various institutions, care which in Clay's case was neither needed nor wanted, and none of which was according to their joint desire and legal preparation.
Clay has lost his partner of 20 years. He and Harold were robbed of their final three months as partners. His home is gone, as the county surrendered Clay's and Harold's lease to their landlord when they institutionalized the two men. Clay has nothing left of his own life, nor of his and Harold's life together save only a photo album which Harold managed to put together for Clay during his final months. Just as you would expect someone to spend his dying days and remaining strength doing for his "ex-roommate".
What is left to say about this kind of behavior? Outrageous? Certainly. Heartbreaking? Unavoidably. Some people suck so hard it's a wonder they haven't swallowed the whole world? Yes. I'm only left to wonder whether the county workers who walked into these men's lives and devastated what was left of their time together, not to mention the continuing life of Clay, did so solely out of bigotry, or whether it may have made their jobs easier to treat Harold as someone with no family who need be bothered with, and Clay as an old man whose needs were unimportant, rather than treating the two of them as an elderly couple in need of assistance and support in carrying out their own desires for their lives under difficult circumstances. And whether making their jobs easier was a good enough reason in these people's minds to justify doing so.
At some point, the court appointed an attorney, Anne Dennis, to represent Clay. She has since managed to secure his release from the nursing home. She and another attorney, with assistance from the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) elder law project, are now representing Clay in a lawsuit against the county whose workers treated him and his partner so callously. July 16 of this year has been set as the date for trial on this matter in Sonoma County, CA.
Neither the article at the Bilerico Project nor the one at NCLR gives a timeline for when these events occurred. Maybe Clay and Harold had not chosen or would not have been able to avail themselves of the opportunity to marry. Maybe the passage of Prop H8 did not affect them. But this story makes clear once again that the right to enter into the civil contract that is marriage, without regard to religious doctrine or ceremony, is fundamental to people's ability to build a family which is recognized by the state, and that denying that right to anyone is not only discriminatory, it is cruel and inhumane.
Dear New York Times:
WHUT?!
"You want to talk about a contrast in American women," [Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Idiculous] said during the last presidential race. "Take a look at Nancy Pelosi, the third most powerful woman" in the United States. The speaker and [Sarah Palin, R-Etrofuck], she suggested, were so radically different as to be incomparable.No, really: WHUT?!
In reality, though, the three belong to what may be the smallest, most exclusive clique in American politics. The admission requirements are beyond most women, and all men: members must be prominent players in the United States political arena and must have given birth to not one, not two, not three, not even four — but five children, something that presumably gives them more in common than they might like to admit.
Whatever forces may be at play, taking a look at present dynamics, any American woman with long-range political ambitions might do well to also look to her nursery.WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!! The plot, New York Times, you have lost it.
Have I mentioned in the last three seconds that we're in the middle of a Big Fucking Backlash? Because we're in the middle of a big fucking backlash. The following are excerpts from Eleanor Mills' article for the Times titled (I shit you not) "Learning to be left on the shelf" (emphasis mine), in which feminism is blamed for women who were bred not to breed, or something:
This isn't just about me. One in five females of my generation will never have children; and the Office for National Statistics reports that the more successful you are professionally, the less likely you are to breed.Et cetera. Leaving aside the evident cis- and heterocentrism, and Mills' evident disbelief that there are a lot of women who are (or will be) happily childless and/or unpartnered in their 40s and beyond, and the reeking classism and entitlement that makes the piece nearly unreadable, I just have to ask on what planet, exactly, did she and her friends grow up where
...What has gone wrong? Last week Joanna Trollope, the novelist, blamed modern women's "absurd" expectations for their lack of husbands. She said women are looking for a man who "has to earn £100,000 a year, has to be able to cut down a tree, play the Spanish guitar, make love all night and cook me a cheese soufflé".
I don't think my single friends are on their own because they are too picky. I think it is because as a generation we were bred not to prioritise finding a husband and having a family. Unlike generations of females before us, we were bred to work. I was born in 1970, in the middle of women's lib. My mother and her peers were conscious-raising and feminist.
...At dinner with girlfriends the other night, the feeling was we'd been let down. That society, by leaving us to fend for ourselves and offering no guidance or advice on the crucial subject of finding a mate, had failed us. After all, throughout history, pairing off the next generation has been a key function of most societies, from Jane Austen's balls to Indian arranged marriages.
No one, not my family or my teachers, ever said, "Oh yes, and by the way you might want to be a wife and mother too."—because NO. I have lived in Britain, and the claim that little girls are not bombarded with images and narratives that they are to seek out wifedom and motherhood is absurd. Mills is only four years older than I am, and even from 4,000 miles away, I knew as a child that Margaret Thatcher was a WIFE! and a MOTHER! goddammit, not just a prime minister.
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) offered the Republican response to President Obama's weekly address and, per Steve Benen, informed America that if we elect Republicans in November, they would offer "responsible, adult leadership."
And ponies. Everyone will get a pony.
Since the election of Barack Obama, we have seen responsible adults offer us death panels, Armageddon, outbursts on the floor of the House during a presidential address, egging on protesters from the floor of the House, a promise by a Senator to "break" the president, expressions of hope that the president would fail, threats of filibusters of Supreme Court nominees before their names have been submitted to the Senate, tantrums of legendary dimensions, blockage of a bill to extend unemployment benefits because it was cutting into watching a basketball game, and deliberate misinterpretation of a bill in order to claim that it contains the exact opposite of what is written. The list goes on and on; feel free to add your own. Meanwhile, can you name any legislative proposals such as economic recovery, healthcare, immigration reform, or anything else that was proposed by the Obama administration that didn't get instant GOP opposition based solely on its origin rather than its merit? And can you name any GOP legislative proposals, such as their 2009 budget proposal without any numbers in it, that passed the laugh test?
So these are the responsible adults they're promising, huh? I can't wait.
Crossposted.
Thomas Mitchell, editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, pens an editorial titled "Time to repeal the 19th Amendment?"—a header whose question mark is superfluous since it's flat-out advocacy for repealing women's suffrage on the basis that "Men are consistent. Women are fickle and biased." and ended on the single word "Repeal."
He then writes a follow-up piece in which he claims the first piece was "bait" to prove that we live in an age of political correctness in which ideas aren't based on merit:
Just as I had anticipated, and in fact spelled out in a veiled reference in the second paragraph, my posting was judged by almost every commenter and e-mailer, not on any merits or demerits of facts in evidence or syllogism used, but on the basis of my age, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability, weight, sartorial choices, facial hair, writing ability, mental capacity, sobriety, sanity, political leanings and perversity — the very appellations the politically correct find so jaw-droppingly offensive.People—women—have died in this country to get the right to vote. Most among us have mothers and grandmothers who were born without the legal right to vote; some of us have parents or grandparents who stood on a line in the south facing cops and dogs and firehoses to fight for full enfranchisement. If I had been born only 54 years earlier, I would have been born without the legal right to vote.
...Without once addressing the fundamental postulate that men and women are delightfully different, I was called an idiot, an (expletive deleted) moron, an ignorant redneck male chauvinist, a racist, a sexist, a narrow minded and crude douchebag, unsophisticated, ignorant, a flat earther, a fool, a Neanderthal and a misogynist.
Former CNN talking head and current douchebag Lou Dobbs confirmed in an interview with GQ he's considering a run for the White House. When pressed by the interviewer to confirm his presidential aspiration, Dobbs responded "If you say so." WTF? Okay, maybe he's just running for student council. I'm not sure what party Dobbs is going to attach himself to. Maybe he'll form a new We-Hate-Mexicans Party. Or maybe he'll just run on the GOP ticket.
Goldman Sachs, which emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis, was accused of securities fraud in a civil suit filed Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which claims the bank created and sold a mortgage investment that was secretly devised to fail.The assertion that the accusations are "completely unfounded in law and fact" is hilarious. As Matt Yglesias points out: "The general form of this complaint, that it was wrong for Goldman to make money by betting on the failure of debt-vehicles that in another context Goldman was marketing, has been around for a while." Being pissed that the SEC believes the law applies to you isn't the same as the case being unfounded in law. Sorry, fellas.
The move marks the first time that regulators have taken action against a Wall Street deal that helped investors capitalize on the collapse of the housing market. Goldman itself profited by betting against the very mortgage investments that it sold to its customers.
The suit also named Fabrice Tourre, a vice president at Goldman who helped create and sell the investment.
In a statement, Goldman called the S.E.C. accusations "completely unfounded in law and fact" and said the firm would "vigorously contest them and defend the firm and its reputation."
[Background.]
