Rand Paul is still a huge racist douche.
More Advocacy Fail
[Trigger warning.]
Copyranter just tipped me to an anti-rape campaign in Britain which features an image of a disembodied woman's lower torso, clad only in panties, with the text: "Have sex with someone who hasn't said yes to it, and the next place you enter could be prison." The image, which I'm not going to post in-page, is viewable here.
Noting that the campaign, which started as ads in lad mags in 2007, has now graduated to posters hanging in public men's restrooms in the UK, Copyranter says: "Call me confused, but showing a half-naked woman in a rape awareness ad being viewed by plastered horny pissing men is just bloody stupid, right?" Right.
Where do I begin with the failfulness? A key part of the rape culture is the dehumanization of women, so featuring a faceless, disembodied, woman's lower torso in an anti-rape campaign is utterly counterproductive—which is to say nothing of the titillation of showing a near-naked faceless, disembodied, woman's lower torso.
And the text. Oh, Maude, the text! Euphemizing rape as "having sex" in an anti-rape campaign is positively absurd. There's no such thing as "having sex with someone who hasn't said yes." The appropriate way to convey this idea without reinforcing narratives of the rape culture is something like: "Sexual activity without consent is illegal" or "Sexual activity without consent is rape."
While I'm certainly not against the idea of noting that going to prison can (should) be the consequence of raping another person, I am decidedly unthrilled with its being communicated as "the next place you enter could be prison," with the victim's body being obliquely invoked as the first "place you enter." Suffice it to say, I don't share the opinion that an anti-rape campaign is the best place for cheeky wordplay, no less cheeky wordplay that reduce a rape victim's body to an inanimate "place" (more dehumanization) that can be equated to prison.
And, really: With an abysmal 6.5% conviction rate, are there any British rapists who are going to be deterred by the threat of prison? Somehow I doubt it. Which means we can "ineffective" to the heaping garbage pile of fail.
What we're left with, then, is an ostensible anti-rape campaign whose only success is more deeply entrenching tools and language of the rape culture. Huzzah.
[Previously in Advocacy Fail: On Exploitation, and Anti-Exploitation Messaging; Calling Cut on Domestic Violence.]
Good News
[Trigger warning for female genital cutting.]
Earlier this month, I wrote about an American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement that proposed a "compromise" on female genital cutting in the form of a "ritual nick," a minor incision of the clitoris to satisfy the urge to ritualistically disfigure a female child's genitals.
In a positive turn of events, the AAP has rescinded the policy statement:
"We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world," said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey.One of the women instrumental in this reversal is Soraya Mire, a Somali filmmaker and survivor of female genital cutting, who now lives in LA and is an anti-FGC advocate working with African immigrant families, who are under pressure to continue the tradition, putting "American girls in immigrant communities at risk of being sent overseas to have the procedure completed." Mire "was in disbelief when she first read the AAP's original statement about six weeks ago."
..."We welcome the AAP's decision to withdraw its 2010 policy statement on FGM," said Lakshmi Anantnarayan, a spokeswoman at Equality Now. "This is a crucial step forward in the movement to raise awareness about female genital mutilation."
She couldn't sleep. She couldn't eat. She's dedicated her time to calling legislators, survivors and advocacy groups to pressure AAP to change its original policy statements.That's a lady who knows how to work a teaspoon, right there.
Her efforts worked, she learned on Wednesday from a personal phone call from the academy. ... "I cried and told them how grateful I am," said [Mire]. "Thank you for understanding us survivors and hearing our voices."
..."I slept so well last night," she said. "I woke up smiling."
House and Senate Armed Services Committee Vote to Repeal DADT
The House voted Thursday to let the Defense Department repeal the ban on gay and bisexual people from serving openly in the military, a major step toward dismantling the 1993 law widely known as "don't ask, don't tell."Good stuff. Note that the House voted to approve an amendment attached to the annual Pentagon policy bill, on which they'll vote today. It is expected to pass.
...The House vote was 234 to 194, with 229 Democrats and 5 Republicans in favor, after an emotionally charged debate. Opposed were 168 Republicans and 26 Democrats.
...Separately on Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a similar measure allowing the repeal.
Supporters of the repeal hailed it as a matter of basic fairness and civil rights, while opponents charged that Democrats and President Obama were destabilizing the military to advance a liberal social agenda.Despite the fact that there is categorically no evidence to support their claim.
In a statement, Mr. Obama said he was "pleased" by the votes.I really like that he said repealing DADT will make the military stronger, but that "honestly and with integrity" is so passive that it suggests, if unintentionally, that LGB soldiers lack integrity and the legislation is granting it to them, without so much as a nod toward the legislation that forced them into self-denial. "To serve openly and with the dignity they've been denied" would have been better, which I know is nitpicking, but, fuck, it's no time for the president to half-ass it, you know?
"This legislation will help make our armed forces even stronger and more inclusive by allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve honestly and with integrity," he said.
Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 Republican in the House, accused Democrats of trying to use the military "to advance a liberal social agenda" and demanded that Congress "put its priorities in order."Like John McCain, Congressman McKeon naturally only cares about the alleged "diss" of the straight troops, and doesn't give a flying flunderton about the "diss" of the LGB troops that is DADT.
Other Republicans said the military was a unique institution and its rules sometimes had to differ from civilian society.
"We are dissing the troops, that is what we are doing," said Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
Gleeful Moment
I've never watched Glee so I'm not familiar with the plot line or the characters, but after seeing this clip, I'm hoping there are some fans of the show out there who can enlighten me.
Okay, I'll admit right off it chokes me up. For one thing, I'm really glad to see this kind of speech in a hit TV show. It's happening more and more, but it's always welcome. But most importantly, I can hear my dad or my mom delivering this speech. Every word.
I may have struggled with growing up gay, but I never for a moment doubted that I could count on the love and support of my family. And that has always brought me my own glee.
Cross-posted.
Question of the Day
You have just been given a $X million budget (whatever you need, no more and no less) to produce a Bechdel Test-passing project—a film, a television series, a play. What is your project, and who do you cast?
Photo of the Day
Actresses Tyne Daly (L) and Sharon Gless (R) attend the Alliance For Women In Media's 2010 Gracies Awards on May 25, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California. [Getty Images.]You know, Hollywood, since you've given up on new ideas, how about remaking Cagney & Lacey? I'll even help out with a casting suggestion: Starring Jill Scott and Miriam Shor. Every lady I know (and most of the dudes) will watch that shit, bozos!
More images of the amazing Daly and Gless below.
DADT Deal: Military Has Final Word?
On Tuesday, I noted my concern that the "deal" the administration had reportedly struck to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning gay soldiers from open service was so vague that "a new Republican administration would mean a new policy at the Pentagon."
It actually appears to be worse than that:
[Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] said yesterday that he's comfortable with proposed legislation that seeks to repeal the law that bans gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military because it includes "very clear language" that gives senior leaders the final say in whether it's implemented.So, essentially, even if the Democratic majority passes the repeal, after midterm elections are already over, the military—and/or, "the military"—can then decide to make that legislation worth less than the paper on which it's printed. Gotcha.
...Implementation wouldn't take place until after a Defense Department study assessing its impact is completed, the chairman explained, and military and defense leaders get to weigh in on the findings.
...After reviewing results of the study, Mullen, the service chiefs and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would provide their recommendations to President Barack Obama. "So having that information will inform me and our leaders about what our recommendations will be," he said.
Mullen called the "certification trigger" provided in the proposed amendment critical.
"The language in there right now preserves my prerogative – and I believe, my responsibility – to give the best military advice," he said.
"That trigger is to certify whether we should move ahead with that change, even if the law were to repeal it," he told a reporter following the session.
Either this is the real deal, or Mullen's talking out his ass and the administration is so incapable of getting its ducks in a row that the chaos threatens to undermine an extremely important piece of radical and long-overdue legislation.
Either way, my contempt for this administration plummets to heretofore uncharted depths.
Dolly
I may have mentioned once or twice, ahem, cough, that I love Dolly Parton.
Now, one of the many things I love about Dolly is her sense of humor about herself, one of the expressions of which is her well-known fondness and appreciation for the drag performers who "do Dolly."
And this has to be the greatest thing evah:
Dolly admits she once lost a Dolly Parton lookalike contest in Santa Monica. "Lots of drag queens dress up on Halloween like Dolly, and that was back when everybody was dressing like Cher or like me. So I thought how fun would this be?" she says. "I just kind of over-exaggerated everything I am—bigger hair, bigger beauty mark, bigger boobs, if you can imagine."OMG. I love her to pieces. There's something just indescribably great about a lady who enters a lookalike contest in which contestants are trying to look like her, and is genuinely tickled by not being considered a serious contender.
Standing just over 5 feet without heels, Dolly says she was the smallest contestant there. "Here all these big drag queens are at least 6 feet tall with their high heels," she says. "I was kind of lost in the shuffle. They didn't take me serious at all."
Dolly ended up coming in second place. "I did it just for fun," she says. "It was just fun to tell the story."
You rock, Dolly.
Celestial Homomentum
Updated
This is better than the Virgin Mary showing up in a tortilla.
This must surely be a sign the Senate must vote repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.If you were out to lunch in the Twin Cities Wednesday and saw a strange streak in the sky, you are not alone.
An unusual rainbow-colored streak appeared across the sky in the Twin Cities Wednesday afternoon.
KARE 11 meteorologist Sven Sundgaard and at least two KARE 11 photojournalists captured images of the strange streak across the sky from KARE's parking lot just after noon in Golden Valley.
Sven's best guess at this point is the streak is a circumhorizontal arc. A circumhorizontal arc occurs only when the sun is high in the sky (above 58 degrees) and hexagonal shaped ice crystals (high clouds or contrails only) are parallel to the horizon at that moment.
A circumhorizontal arc never occurs above or below 55 degrees latitude because the sun is never that high in the sky and rare for mid latitude locations like the Twin Cities. We see less than 200 hours between May and July of the sun at that high angle.
Sven estimates the streak was at about 15,000 - 20,000 feet in the air.
Update: Never doubt the power of a circumhorizontal arc.
HT to Todd S from Minneapolis.
Cross-posted.
What a Difference a Score Makes
[Trigger warning for stalking.]
Below is a trailer for the film 500 Days of Summer reimagined as a "thriller," i.e. a film in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character is recast as a nefarious stalker who targets Zooey Deschanel's character after she dumps him. What's interesting about it, of course, is that the scenes aren't really recut to look like a totally different movie; it's just got a creepy score instead of some charming indie single laid over it. And that makes it a pretty awesome commentary on the oft-discussed stalking-as-courtship trope, which features centrally in so many romantic comedy films.
[A transcript really wouldn't be of any use here, since the video is almost entirely free of dialogue. The paraphrase is as above: Scenes of a romance, a break-up, and the commencement of stalking by a profoundly unhappy jilted dude.]
[Related: If you have not read Sady's post on 500 Days of Summer, you should, and it is here.]
Cities Move to Ban Sale of Companion Animals at Petshops
It's hard to argue with this (not that I was inclined to try, anyway):
To see what really happens when a city bans pet sales, you have to go to Albuquerque, N.M. The Southwestern city banned sales of "companion animals," including cats and dogs, in 2006, and has seen a marked, positive effect, said Peggy Weigle, executive director of Animal Humane New Mexico.Wow.
Since the ban started, animal adoptions have increased 23 percent and euthanasia at city shelters has decreased by 35 percent.
The story includes the requisite "other side," quoting Michael Maddox, vice president of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, a lobbyist group in DC, arguing that "the vast majority of customers who bring home their canine companion from a pet store are supremely satisfied with the experience" (if that were true, shelters wouldn't be full of abandoned dogs), and Dana Derraugh, owner of Le Petit Puppy in Greenwich Village, who asserts that the $700+ pups she sells only come from reputable breeders and she oughtn't be put out of business by shady petshops.
I quite genuinely sympathize with her, but if her specialty is truly finding "high quality" puppies from reputable breeders, then she doesn't need a storefront; she needs a way to market her expertise as a pet matchmaker—a service for which I'm certain people would be willing to pay (and essentially already are paying, given she's running a for-profit business).
[Via Margaret.]
Quote of the Day
"Sex ed has mainly been focused on reproduction, not relationships. But people in the field have been beginning to understand that…it's not just about body parts or pathogens or the mechanics of contraception; it's about what constitutes a respectful, warm relationship."—Sarah Brown, executive director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, quoted in an excellent and highly-recommend article in The Nation about reproductive coercion.
Also quotable: "Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women's health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control." Read the whole thing here.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
[Possible non-explicit American Idol spoiler...]
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 (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
"Terrible and Disappointing"
CNN American Morning Anchor John Roberts interviews Managing Director of BP Bob Dudley about the recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast. Dudley's dispassionate spin is absolutely infuriating.
[Transcript below.]
Shaker Anitanola sent me the link to this video this morning, which underlines the patent fuckery of Dudley's claim that BP staff and volunteers are all through the marshlands organizing prevention of further environmental damage and coordinating clean-up efforts.
The BP gusher "has already spilled more oil than the Exxon Valdez disaster—possibly more than twice as much, making it the largest oil spill in U.S. history."
Bob Dudley, Managing Director of BP: What you have is this titanic arm wrestling match between the well and the heavy muds that we're driving into the well—two flows essentially going at each other with a stream that comes out of the well. And while you can't draw conclusions from the plume other than it is drilling mud, sometimes it will be stopped for awhile. Sometimes you may see some oil and gas. So you can't draw conclusions from what you see. Right now, what you see is a water-based, nontoxic mud—
John Roberts, CNN Anchor: Right.
Dudley: —that is coming out of the top.
Roberts: So you'll keep pumping that in until there is sufficient weight—I guess the theory goes that there's sufficient weight to that mud holding down the oil—you can stop pumping it and it should stabilize?
Dudley: That's right. That's the objective here is that the flow rate is high. We can't pump in with too high a pressure as it will create other damage. So it is truly an arm wrestling match, a very closely balanced forces. Assuming we can wrestle the well to the ground, after that we would pump in cement to be able to really kill it.
Roberts: Is there a chance that if this doesn't work this well could be gushing until you get that kill well drilled, and that won't be until August?
Dudley: Well, those options are not way down the line. We've set out on the seabed all around where the activity is today. So that we determine we just can't overcome it in the "top kill" operation, we will immediately go into the phase of putting out, cutting off the top and putting a containment device in it. That might take two to three days before we would have that in place. If we did that, we think we would then be able to float the oil to the surface and measure it at that point.
Roberts: Yes.
Dudley: But what we really need to do is try to kill this thing.
Roberts: Yes.
Dudley: And so far that operation is proceeding like we expected.
Roberts: According to Jindal and other officials, nobody's been back there to even try to clear that out. Why isn't BP back there trying to mop up this mess?
Dudley: Well, I know, John, from the operation center there that they have—there really are thousands of people. The Coast Guard, and the BP people as well as local volunteers they're all around through that area—
Roberts: Well, with respect, Mr. Dudley, there were none in this particular area and there haven't been for days.
Dudley: Well, there are pockets in there where they are prioritizing where they are focused. There are pockets where people haven't been yet, but I assure you there are people all around through those regions working hard, and cleaning it up, putting it away for hazardous material disposal. The marshes are sensitive and difficult. And once it's in there, that is what we really want to keep out and not allow that area to increase.
Roberts: And as you look at these pictures you can see that the grasses are dying already, which kind of brings to mind a statement that your CEO Tony Hayward made in recent days that he thought that overall the environmental impact of this would be, quote, "very, very modest." Are you still sticking with that assessment?
Dudley: Well, he made those statement some time ago. And at that point we had been able to keep all of the oil off the beaches everywhere. And we were disappointed to see them break through some of those defenses. And so there is no question that he is devastated to see that. We're redoubling our efforts. The Coast Guard and BP are mobilizing people from the other sides of the gulf now in Louisiana.
Roberts: So, if I were to ask you now what you thought the environmental impact of this would be, what would you say?
Dudley: Well, I mean, for the people of southeast Louisiana, this is clearly, clearly a terrible thing. It's terrible for the wildlife in that area. It's disappointing for all the teams who are working so hard and they have been working for a long time down there in that hot weather.
Roberts: Sure. Sure.
[crosstalk]
Dudley: I'm just energized to try to minimize it, to make sure that more doesn't get through, but we do have damage, there's no question.
Roberts: Yes. I'm sorry, Mr. Dudley. I mean, terrible and disappointed. Those are interesting words to use to describe what people are feeling, but in terms of the actual environmental impact, is this minimal? Is it moderate? Is it going to be a disaster? How would you put it?
Dudley: Well, there are 30 acres there right now of marshland. It's clearly a disaster for that area. The beaches, the tide brings in the oil, we have the teams to clean up the oil and then the tide brings it back in. It's a continuous cycle. I think that we'll be able to clean and get those beaches clean. The marshes will take more time to recover. This has happened before in areas of Louisiana. They take time to recover. And then we've got to understand the impacts of the dispersant and the oil in the gulf and we started—we'll start a massive study program with scientists from all over the gulf region and this will take a decade. We'll support that. We need to understand so we learn from this for the future. Not only for the Gulf of Mexico but everywhere in the world.
The Journey of an Envious Girl
My senior year of high school, I became friends with a girl I'll call Nora.
I had known of Nora, and been vaguely acquainted with her, since our first year of high school, after students from the two local junior highs poured into one giant freshman class, mingling uneasily in the suspicion-soaked demilitarized zone marked by our former rivalry. I was from one school and she was from the other, owing to our residence in different parts of town; her neighborhood had a name, which was displayed on a stone marker at the entrance to the subdivision. I just lived on the corner of two unremarkable streets.
Even though our new unified class was more than 650 students, we knew each other distantly by name and face. We didn't have classes together, but we shared friends in common among the intersecting social circles formed around student activities. By senior year, she was head cheerleader and I was the editor of the school paper—disparate endeavors that nonetheless left us with more in common than the kids who weren't joiners, who came to school every morning with dragging feet and vacant expressions and left at the end of each day, right at the buzzer, the same way; the kids we never saw hanging event posters in echoing hallways long after even the teachers had gone home.
Senior year was the first time we had a class together. It was physics, taught by a Russian immigrant who was nicked for selling black market goods out of the trunk of his car and scandalously had an affair with one of the chemistry teachers, both of which had naturally turned him into a legend among teenagers. He flirted mightily with his female students, but was also encouraging: "Women can do science," he told us. "Women should do science."
He had a laissez-faire approach to teaching, giving us swift and intense lessons, rather than trying to stretch the material to fill the hour, after which he would sit at the imposing black-topped table at the front of the room, reading the financial pages of the Chicago Tribune and cursing, but making himself eminently available to us for individual instruction if we approached. We were otherwise left to our own devices, allowed to use the time to complete the assignment or fuck around in the most egregious ways, including unsupervised and unsavory use of the Bunsen burners.
It was in that void of structured instruction that Nora and I became friends. One of my two best girlfriends, who were also in the class, was friends with Nora, and she got pulled into our little group, where, some days, we did the assignment together, and, other days, sat around talking shit, leaving the assignment for homework. Nora and I, unlike the other two girls, liked alternative music; she had the cheerleaders dancing to Nine Inch Nails during halftime, and I was getting letters to the editor admonishing me to "stop reviewing albums by fags" and demanding "more Warrant!"
I should mention here that Nora was (and, I imagine, still is) beautiful. That is not incidental to this story, because I ardently admired Nora's beauty. She had a golden complexion she'd inherited along with a lyrical last name from her Italian father, and long, wavy, honey-brown hair and crystal blue eyes. Her body was everything that mine was not—tall and slender and built perfectly for wearing fashionable clothes. She had an impeccable natural style that gave her what passed for sophistication in a small-town high school, and she was confident enough to be goofy.
She was that beautiful girl written about in stories who so intimidates boys that she never has a date. And, when prom rolled around, no one asked her. She brought a gorgeous college boy, a friend of her older brother's who hadn't even gone to our high school, and was a patently ridiculous specimen. She might have been embarrassed if she'd decided to go to prom with the other cheerleaders and their football-player dates—but, at our table, she wasn't being judged on his adequacy.
When she was called up onstage as part of the prom court, we cheered wildly for her. Someone else—a nice girl, who was a star on the softball team—was named prom queen, and when Nora returned to the table, she expressed a genuine happiness for the girl who'd won. It seemed almost silly that Nora would have been nominated to something as provincial as a high school prom court, standing there in her sparkling gold column dress, with her hair down and curly and wild, while everyone else was in disastrous neon gowns, their hair trapped miserably in awful, hairsprayed up-dos. She was already a woman, among girls.
After high school, we went our separate ways and promised to keep in touch, but didn't. There was no internet, no email, no mobile phones with texting and free long distance. We each wrote a letter or two from our universities in different states, but failed to form a habit. We had new lives to build. I nonetheless still think of her, both because she is embedded in some fond memories of that time, and because my relationship with her is so intimately associated with my feminism.
Because she was beautiful and smart and funny—and, perhaps more importantly, because she had no ego about these things—Nora was the kind of girl about whom other girls said, "I hate her." Sometimes, those who were meaner, or just bolder, said it right to her face—"I hate you," in that way that's somehow meant to be a compliment, despite its being delivered in a tone of contrived affection that cannot conceal the underlying spite. "God, you're so pretty; I hate you." "God, you're so thin; I hate you." "God, you're so perfect, Nora. I hate you!"
She would laugh nervously, uncomfortably. "I'm not," she'd insist, and look away. I felt for her. There was no response she could have offered to make herself less "hateable," but nothing quite piqued the ire of the mean girls in the way that her authentic humility did.
In truth, they didn't hate her; they envied her. And so did I. But I didn't then understand that their "hatred" and my affinity for Nora had the same genesis, its expressions made distinct by my security. I wanted more of her in the world, not less. Their insecurity made them destructive toward her—which is something I can only describe in retrospect, given the benefit of maturity.
At the time, I thought maybe I fancied her.
All I knew was that I was different, because I didn't "hate" her the way the other girls did. And I didn't know what that difference was. I guessed, even though I'd never had the urge to kiss her the way I wanted to kiss boys, that maybe I was a lesbian. I'd sure been called a dyke often enough by bullies; perhaps they were right after all.
It wasn't until I'd arrived at university and started taking classes in women's studies that I finally began to understand what set me apart from the girls who hated Nora: I am a feminist.
I'd heard of feminism before, and I had a cursory understanding of it as a belief in gender equality. But as the concept of a comprehensive feminism began to really take shape for me, I realized that my relationship with other women, especially women I admired, was different because I viewed them as complements to me, not competitors.
Suddenly, here was this explanation for my intuitive (and totally unconscious) rejection of the endemic idea that women cannot appreciate and cherish each other's strengths, cannot be role models for one another, but instead must regard each other mistrustfully and competitively. I saw a distinction between the warm and aspirational envy I felt toward Nora, and the destructive jealousy that I saw directed at her by our peers.
Women, contrary to nearly every message on the subject I'd internalized since birth, could be inspired by other women they respected; women did not need to axiomatically feel threatened by the kind of women they wanted to be.
It is terrible that this was a revelation to me half my life ago, and that it is a revelation to many young women (and not-young women) still.
My friendship with Nora was unlikely, given the peculiar way relationships are built in an American high school. We were a bit like two Breakfast Clubbers who'd decided to keep speaking after a profound day in detention. But the lack of judgment on superficial bullshit that we offered each other, providing space for one another to be complex creatures and deviate without reproach from stereotype, was rare and lovely. We accepted each other.
I was part of an artsy-fartsy crowd; my people were writers for the school paper and the yearbook and the literary magazine, photographers, painters, drama club kids, glee singers. Nora was part of the popular crowd; her people were cheerleaders and athletes and the Student Council officers. We gushed longingly and lustfully for Eddie Vedder—and deconstructed his lyrics. We flirted back with our physics teacher. We talked quietly in class about being misfits, and confessed our insecurities, and reassured each other. Existing in that space with another woman, whom I did not judge and who did not judge me, taught me about the kind of woman I wanted to be with other women.
I think about that, and her, with an abiding fondness when I think about how feminism is not just about the idea that women are not just men's equals, but each other's. We are taught to tear each other down, instead of building each other up—but feminism teaches us how to build, how to be partners.
We can create spaces in between us, free of judgment and rich with encouragement, in which we can gaze on each other's enviable qualities with appreciative smiles.
Republicans Threaten Filibuster Over Repeal of DADT
Armed Services Republicans threatened Wednesday to filibuster the defense authorization bill if it comes to the floor with Democrat-backed language repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.When he says he's going to "support the men and women of the military," naturally he means only the straight ones.
Armed Services ranking member John McCain said Thursday that he would "without a doubt" support a filibuster if the bill goes to the floor with repeal language.
"I'll do everything in my power," the Arizona Republican said, citing letters from the four service chiefs urging Congress not to act before a Pentagon review of the policy is complete. "I'm going to do everything I can to support the men and women of the military and to fight what is clearly a political agenda."
Armed Services committee member Senator Roger Wicker (R-etrogradefuckneck), also threatened to filibuster the repeal.
These are the people with whom President Obama insists there is common ground, despite their continual insistence on roadblocking every attempt at progress the Democrats try to make.
