Coming This Fall From NBC: Outsourced

A bunch of Shakers have emailed me about one of the new sitcoms that NBC will be debuting this fall. Titled Outsourced, it's about a white dude from the US whose call center gets outsourced to India, so he has to move there and colonize manage the outsourced call center:

[Full transcript below.]
Wow. Just…wow. How many Indian stereotypes can we jam into one four-and-a-half-minute clip? Indian traffic/culture is teh crazy—check. Indian names are unpronounceable—check. Indian names are funny—check. Indian clothes are weird—check. Indian women are submissive—check. Indian women are naively sexy—check. Indian men are silly and awkward—check. Indian men are conniving (and sinister!)—check. Indian people are clueless about Western culture—check. Indian people are literal and humorless—check. Indian food is awful—check. Indian food is too spicy for white people to handle—check. Indian food makes you poop!—check. And last but not least: Indian people really need a WHITE MAN to sort them out—CHECKITY-CHECK-CHECK!

And, let me guess: This heaping fuckload of racism is supposed to be okay, because the straight white male protagonist learns a thing or two about life and love and what it means to be human from these noble brown people, too!

All I can say is:


I mean, seriously, NBC? Seriously, this is the best you can do in the year two thousand and fucking ten? This is shameful. And that the whole thing is set to a backdrop of USian nationalism by way of "Ignorant American" stereotypes and jingoistic sloganeering on novelty products, in the middle of a recession, during the highest unemployment in a generation, while desperate and unkind people are dangerously pissed about outsourcing and immigration and any other vague sense that brown people are taking white USians' rightful jobs, just makes it that much worse.

Fail on a massive scale.

[A young white man named Todd walks into a call center which is deserted, except for a middle-aged white man at the other end of the room, who is named Jerry. He is standing under a company sign reading "Mid America Novelties."]

Jerry: Todd! How was management training?

Todd: Um…where is everybody?

Jerry: We had to do a little right-sizing.

Todd: But there's no one here.

Jerry: Exactly! That's what makes us the right size! Yesterday, we outsourced the entire call center t India.

[Todd looks confused, then startled as they are interrupted by the sound of shattering glass. A brick has been thrown through the window with a note tied to it. Todd picks it up and looks at the note.]

Todd: "You bastard"…?

Jerry: Ah! That's for me. [He takes the brick, reads the note and chuckles, then tosses it onto a pile of similar bricks next to his desk.]

Todd: Jerry! Jerry, I—I went through training specifically to run the call center.

Jerry: We still want you to run the call center. In India!

[Todd laughs, then his face drops as he realizes Jerry is serious. Cut to Todd riding in a cycle taxi in India, looking out at the traffic with a mixture of excitement and fright. He comments to his companion, a middle-aged Indian man, that the traffic is "insane."]

Male Voiceover: In the world of call center management, Todd Dempsey had reached the end of the line.

Todd: It's like Frogger, but with real people!

[Cut to Todd and his companion, who I'll call Manager, walking into a call center filled with Indian women and men. Manager claps his hands to get everyone's attention.]

Manager: Come now—you are meant to work, not sit around doing chit-chat!

[Paraphrase of the next section: Todd is seen introducing himself to many of his new Indian colleagues. He doesn't understand Marminder's name; he bows awkwardly at a woman who isn't named; Madhuri speaks so quietly he cannot hear her—she is so shy and exotic!—he is deeply amused by Manmeet's name: "Your name is Manmeet? It must be hard to chat on the internet with a name like Manmeet!"]

Male Voiceover: And for one of America's largest novelty companies, it was the perfect fit.

[Quick montage of novelties: Female employee is looking at the Mid America Novelties catalog, on the cover of which is "the Fanny Bank," where coins are deposited via buttcrack; Manager drinks out a toilet-shaped coffee mug; Todd puts a "cheesehead" hat on and the employees laugh.]

Todd: Let's not make fun of each other's head gear, all right? I mean, you guys have got some pretty crazy-looking hats yourselves. [A Sikh man wearing a dastar gets up and walks out, glowering at Todd.] Mostly on the women, though. [Cut to a Muslim woman wearing a hijab throwing Todd a WTF face.]

[Cut to a male and a female employee looking confused while standing on either side of an animatronic deer head singing "Home on the Range." Cut to a male employee standing with an animatronic dog humping his leg. "I've always wanted a pet! Bad dog!" he says, laughing. Cut to several quick shots of various employees wearing headsets, looking inept. Todd watches over the room, looking concerned. Cut to Manmeet on the phone with a customer, giving him the confirmation number to his order or something. He looks both competent and confident.]

Manmeet: That's 2, 5, 6, K as in Krishna, P as in Punjabi, R as in Ramayana.

Male Caller: Where am I calling? [Manmeets face falls.] Is this India?

Manmeet: [nervously] No.

Male Caller: [angrily] Am I calling FREAKING India to get a mug that says "America is #1"?!

Manmeet: [frantically, as Todd and Manager watch] No! We're in Detroit—city of motors and black people!

[The caller hangs up and Todd makes a pained face. Cut to an employee named Gupta on the phone with another customer.]

Gupta: If you like the beer helmet, we also have a t-shirt which says "Beer makes my clothes fall off." ... I'm wearing one right now! … No, you're a liar!

[Cut to Todd having a quiet conversation with Manager.]

Todd: Are these really the best workers that you could find?

Manager: Are you suggesting I hired lesser employees to make you look bad? [He says it in a way that suggests that's totally what he did, probably because Todd is taking his job.]

Todd: If I can't make this office work, they're gonna get rid of me.

[Manager gasps, trying to contain his glee; Todd is too stupid and/or up his own ass to notice. Cut to the cafeteria, where Todd is greeted by another white USian man. He sits down to have lunch with him.]

Charlie: [shaking Todd's hand] Charlie Davies. I run the call center for All-American Hunter. [He looks over at Todd's staff, who are eating together at another table. They are dressed in casual and/or traditional Indian clothes.] Looks like you got the B-team, my friend. They probably don't know squat about America. [He points to another table, where a group of Indian woman and men are dressed in business suits.] Now that's the A-team over there. They all work for the big boys, like Intel and Apple. They've all been in the States; they've even studied all our different accents.

Todd: No way!

Charlie: [gesturing to one of the men from the "A-team"] Hey, you—come here!

A-Teamer: Yes, what is it?

Charlie: You know what grits are?

A-Teamer: [in generic and broad Southern accent] Well, grits is just ground-up corn. I'll tell you what, my mama used'a make the best grits—

Charlie: All right.

A-Teamer: I'd be sittin' on the front porch with my hound dog, Freedom, sippin' on some sweet tea—

Charlie: All right, enough!

[Cut to Todd standing in front of all his employees at the call center. There is a map of the US behind him on the wall.]

Todd: Okay, it's time you guys learned about [he pauses and pulls out DVDs and CDs from behind his back] America.

[Paraphrase of the next section: Manmeet acts out a scene from Glengarry Glen Ross; the others applaud; Asha performs "It's Tricky" by Run DMC; Todd looks horny for her; Madhuri whispers something so quietly no one can hear her—she is so shy and exotic!—Gupta sings and dances "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me" by the Pussycat Dolls, which is not only funny and gross because he's a dude, but because he's fat! Everyone howls and tells him to stop.]

Male Voiceover: [over image of Todd looking at a cow out the window, which, btw, does not have horns, as an actual cow in India probably would] Coming to NBC…

[Cut back the cafeteria scene. Charlie gestures at Todd's food, which looks dreadfully unappealing and drab, no red vindaloos or golden kormas to be found.]

Charlie: You got the [?].

Todd: So?

Charlie: You hate your own ass? If you eat that, you'll be crapping yourself for five days. Five. Full. Days.

Male Voiceover: [over image of Todd holding up theJingle Jugs] Cultures will clash…

Todd: [grinning] This is Jingle Jugs!

Male Voiceover: [over image of blond white Australian woman approaching Todd and Charlie in the cafeteria] Romance will blossom…

Tonya: I'm Tonya. [She shakes Todd's hand and Asha looks on jealously from the other table]

Male Voiceover: [over image of Madhuri on phone, being all quiet and shy and exotic] And operators will be standing by!

Male Caller: [exasperated] Hello?! Hellooooo. Is anyone there?

Madhuri: [after glancing at Todd nervously, who gestures to her to take the call] How can I help you?

Caller: I'd like to order the fake dog poo.

Madhuri: Wonderful choice. [Todd looks on and grins, like a proud patriarch.]

Caller: Yeah, my roommate's really getting on my nerves, you know?

Madhuri: In that case, could I also interest you in our fake vomit, on page 23, lower lefthand of the page?

Caller: Does it look real?

Madhuri: Well, it makes me sick to look at it.

Caller: Mmm…okay! Yeah, sure, fine, why not? I'll get the vomit, too.

[Madhuri smiles; the others applaud, as if: A) They can hear the call; and B) She's not still on it; and C) The caller couldn't hear them applauding and cheering.]

Todd: I knew you could do it! I KNEW it!

[Cut to image of Todd giving a two-fisted thumbs-up and grinning like a dildobrain, next to the text: OUTSOURCED. Cut back to Madhuri on her call.]

Madhuri: Sir, how would you like to pay for your vomit and your poo?

[Cut to image of Manmeet wearing a big foam #1 hand next to the NBC logo.]

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Teen Trans Man Character on UK Soap Hollyoaks

News from the Guardian this morning (via Liss) that the British soap Hollyoaks will feature a character who will be transitioning to live as a man (mind that the article is...imperfect, let us say, in its approach, despite what I believe are good intentions).

They've brought along a young trans man to help the woman playing the part to get it right, which is very positive. I'd say they should have just cast a trans man, but then we get into the problematic part of the trans person being required to play their birth gender - I know I wouldn't want to - so it's not maybe as cut-and-dried as that.

Given that, though, I do applaud the show's creative staff for taking this step. I think media properties with trans people as part of the daily life of a community are better than those without. I also think it's good that they've chosen to depict a trans man; too many people still associate transness with trans women, and it's good to see my trans brothers getting a bit more visibility (*fist-bump of trans solidarity to my trans brothers*)

Although it'd be nice, mind, to have seen them cast a trans man of colour. Trans women of colour are almost exclusively seen in MSM as sex workers, and trans men of colour just don't exist, apparently (if you go by MSM depictions!).

Edit: A Shaker who would prefer to remain anonymous (but whom I thank) points out that I missed out on my usual practice of noting "markedness" by identifying the apparent characteristics of the subject. In this case, I might have more effectively described the actor playing the role as being an apparently white cis woman; I relied on the picture accompanying the article to tell that tale, which is not useful for any Shakers who might be Blind, for instance, or just on dialup and not having the time or money to d/l the article. And leaving out the race label is, sadly, an artifact of the racism I've breathed in all my life. Only using labels for people who differ from the "norm" is an othering practice. My apologies for the lapses, and my thanks to the Shaker who raised the issue with me.

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Two Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Scarlett and Black: "You Don't Know"

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Sometimes a Strange Notion

The Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project has released the results of another Pew survey, this one conducted in 22 nations between April 7 and May 8 on the subject of whether lady-persons are entitled to the same rights as regular people, i.e., men.

Semi-Excellent News, Shakers! A great majority of the surveyed people believe that women should indeed have equal rights with men! Many would caution, however, that we must not allow that to interfere with men's special right to be more equal!

Majorities from large to very large in all but one (Nigeria) of the countries surveyed agree that "Women should have equal rights". The greatest majorities, at 99%, agreed with that statement in France and Spain, followed closely by the U.S. and Britain at 97%. (Nobody asked you, Canada. Maybe you were all busy that month? But Happy Canada Day, anyway!)

The same four countries head the list, at 97%, of respondents agreeing with the statement that, "Women should be able to work outside the home." Hmmm. That leaves 2% of respondents in those equality-loving countries, France and Spain, who do believe women "should have equal rights" but do not believe they "should be able to work outside the home".

Possibly those Spanish and French two-percenters don't believe men should "be able to work outside the home", either? "Everybody just stay home!", those 2% of Spanish and French respondents are hollering. "That way, no traffic, and I can get where I'm going faster!"

Even though large majorities everywhere agreed that women should be able to work outside the home, anywhere from 12% in Britain and Spain to over 80% in Pakistan and India favored the view that, "When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job." 14% in the U.S. agreed with that statement.

As you might expect, there were differences in men's and women's views. Six countries — Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, Jordan, and Pakistan — showed a double-digit gap between the numbers of each who supported women's having equal rights with men. In Nigeria, where respondents showed the least support for equal rights, 56% of women agreed they should have equal rights, while only 35% of men said they should.

The difference between men's and women's responses were the greatest in Egypt. There, only 45% of men supported equal rights for women, but 76% of women did. So there must be some interesting conversations going on in Egypt on this subject.

As for how all this support for equal rights and roles is working out, Pew says:

The survey also finds that women are far more likely than men to perceive gender inequalities. By double-digit margins, female respondents in 13 of 22 nations are more likely than male respondents to say men in their countries have the better life. And in most countries where majorities among both men and women agree that men get more opportunities than women for high-paying jobs, women are considerably more likely to say they completely agree that is the case.

The NY Times quotes the University of Auckland's Prof. Jacqui True, head of the feminist theory and gender studies section of the International Studies Association, who notes, “When you’re left out of the club, you know it. When you’re in the club, you don’t see what the problem is.”

Trolls around the world maintain, however, that differing perceptions on gender inequality are purely the result of wimminz "always looking for stuff to get mad about".

The Times article, refreshingly, quotes Prof. True, along with Prof. Herminia Ibarra, co-author of the 2010 Corporate Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum, in contextualizing the results of the study, without demonstrating a need to "balance" their professional expertise by quoting any self-appointed representatives of the Dept. of Mean-Girlz-are Taking-All-of-Our-Stuff at Itz-Hard-Out-Here-for-the-Menz U.

Of course, the Times article also says, "Showing how widely accepted the notion of equality has become, even more men than women in Britain and Japan supported equal rights".

See, there? The fact that, in two countries, more people whose views really matter, i.e., men, support "equal rights" than women do, demonstrates how widely accepted the "notion" of equality has become.

I could not locate the full gender-breakdown for each surveyed country of responses to the question of whether men and women should have equal rights, either on the Pew survey result page, or in the Times article.

The only place I found the statement "more men than women in Britain and Japan supported equal rights" was in the Times article. The Pew survey was done in conjunction with the International Herald Tribune, however, which is owned by the NY Times.

The survey also questioned whether respondents thought a university education is more important for a boy than for a girl, whether marriage is more satisfying if "the husband provides for the family and the wife takes care of the house and children" or if "both have jobs and both take care of the house and children", and whether women should have the right to decide whether they wear a veil. That last question was asked only in majority-Muslim countries, and was asked only of Muslim respondents.

Peruse the survey report for yourself here.

(Edited to remove the phrase "a bare majority", which was an inaccurate description of the percentage of Nigerian women who believe women should have rights equal to men's.)

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Gender Justice Summit 2010: Food Insecurity in South Africa

(I apologize again for my slowness here; it's a combination of factors, from depression to work stress - running my own business - to physical disability)

This is a continuing series of reports on the Gender Justice Summit 2010, held in Toronto by Oxfam Canada over the weekend of June 20-21, 2010. To access other posts in the series, click on the label at the bottom of the post.

Saturday morning's large session included a talk by Roseline Presence, Cooperatives Programme Assistant of the Woman on Farms Project, about Food Security, Culture and Gender. Ms. Presence is a former farmworker herself, before she began work as an activist for the WFP. The WFP, by the way, is an explicitly feminist organization.

The focus of the organization's work is on the lives of women farm workers, and the difficulties they're facing from the effects of climate change, farm subsidies in the global North (i.e., most of us reading this), peak oil, racism, sexism, capitalism, substance abuse, and sexual, domestic and work-based violence.

I'll approach each of the above in turn, and explain how Ms. Presence showed its link to the lives of farm workers in South Africa.

Let's start with climate change. Among the immediate effects are that the growing season is changing, as are the crops suitable for the climate, and the fauna damage and diseases that crops can be subject to. The dominos fall from there: drought from the season moving, which takes more land out of useful ranges. The knowledge brought to farming in the area from generations of farmers is fading in usefulness, as the climate shifts.

Farm subsidies are a huge problem for the global south: with subsidized farming in the north, the prices are depressed all over the world for those crops. This means that either other countries subsidize their farmers, or those farmers cannot economically compete. This is a problem when the other countries don't have the monetary resources that the subsidizers do; it can result in local markets in South Africa having higher prices for crops grown within 100 km, than for the same crops imported across the ocean from a subsidizing state.

Peak oil is having an effect in the shift from growing people food to growing vehicle food: so-called "biofuels"* are replacing staple crops in many parts of the world, and contributing to food insecurity - often among the workers on the very farms growing the agrifuel!

I hope few of you need to be told how South Africa's historic racism has hardly been erased. While there may be a lot more non-White people in the government seats, there has been no widespread land reform movement, meaning the same white farmers who held all the land before the end of apartheid mostly still own it now. And they're not in a sharing mood. Obviously, their workers are hardly going to be in a position, making abysmal wages (reports of people making less than 200Rand a week are quite common - this is ~USD26, or ~EUR21), to make offers on the land being held by the large commercial farms.

And the large commercial farms themselves are a big part of the problem. They generally grow GMOs, which are not required to be labelled in South Africa - and in fact, unless you're willing to grow GMOs, you can't get a bank loan for a farm. And of course these GMOs are always sterile, meaning the farmers can't keep the seed, and must re-purchase every year - which again cuts money out of the pockets of farmers.

There have been some tepid attempts at land reform, but they tend to be so hedged-about with conditions - conditions nearly impossible for farm workers to meet, such as high levels of education, and an ability to prove that the land will be worked well - that it leads to what is basically sharecropping.

Sexism becomes obvious when one recognizes that only women who are in hetero relationships are considered for land ownership - meaning a woman who wants to own some land must find a husband. There is a great deal of cultural and racist opposition to women owning land in their own right.

Capitalism plays its part, in that most of the large commercial farms are monocultural (meaning they grow only one crop), and the crops they grow are generally not staple foods, like rice, wheat, or vegetables. They tend to be foods grown for export to the global North: oranges, grapes, palm (for oil), and so on. Monocultural farms exhaust the nutritive quality of the soil fairly quickly (which is why good farmers usually practice crop rotation, growing different crops in succession on a given field), and they're subject to the vagaries of the world market: if every crop in the state is wheat, what do you do when there are bumper crops everywhere, and the price goes through the floor?

Well, in South Africa, what you do is lay off the farm workers. And since they tend to live on the farms they work, this effectively means "make the farm workers and their families homeless". Ponder that the next time you're thinking about buying some South African grapes at the supermarket.

Substance abuse, of course, is a problem in most situations of poverty: people will take whatever brief escape they can find.

I doubt I need to tell an audience of Shakers about the violence that South African women face; it is of the same quality that women everywhere face, sexual and domestic, but it has the appalling additional instance that it happens not infrequently on farms, when farm owners/field bosses feel it is their right to beat the workers for almost any excuse. Domestic violence shouldn't be surprising when we recognize that in order to own land, women need a husband - and that that husband then has an enormous amount of power over her, because if he leaves, she could lose the land.

The Woman on Farms Project is working to solve these issues from the ground up. They are working to set up co-operative and/or communal farms, owned in common by the people working the land, growing staples for local use. They provide education about GMOs, better agricultural practices, and about the workers' human rights. They work to empower local women to take control of their lives and circumstances.

Ms. Presence spoke of one family as an example: a woman leading a household of 10 on a wage of 140 Rand per week (about USD19, or EUR16). She works on a farm which is a supplier for the UK supermarket chain, Tesco.

A further insidious problem is the baby bonus, a grant given to women who have children. In order to achieve that greater financial security, young women are faced with either having babies pretty much as soon as they're able, or starving. Which leads to another generation trapped in a state of poverty, without the resources to escape.

Many of us in the global north spent some effort on tut-tutting and clucking our tongues when Robert Mugabe went after land reform in Zimbabwe in 2000, but I hope I've given you a picture of why those farm workers were so angry about the distribution of arable land, and why they rose up to take it back. The issues are very similar in South Africa, only it held on to apartheid/colonialist rule for much longer than Zimbabwe. I'm not saying Mugabe is a nice person - he's really not - but there's a lot of understanding of why he took on land reform with such anger.

Later on in the day we watched a movie about one community's attempt to reclaim some land, by planting staple crops on it after it sat fallow for decades while the white farm owner refused to allow its use. I'm hoping to find someone who could provide the WFP a place to host that movie online, because it's a really good film and has some really eye-opening stuff in it. It runs about 17 minutes. If you can help me find some (free!) hosting for it, I'd be most grateful; I'd really like to do at least one small concrete thing to help this organization.

* There is a shift in the progressive community from using "biofuel", which carries a certain amount of implied goodness (mm, bio! everything from bio must be good, right?), to using "agrifuel", a somewhat more neutral term.

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Film Corner!

Recall the trebuchet?

It is being built.


Sorry Spudsy. :-(

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Happy Canada Day!

(Photo credit to tonydude919 on flickr; used under Creative Commons licence)

Happy Canada Day, Shakers! It's a good day for maple syrup, ice hockey, back bacon (or substitutes, for my vegetarian friends), good comedians (and some bad ones!), socialized medicine, remembering the 'u' in honour and colour, denying we say "aboot", and telling ourselves we're better than everywhere else.

Tell us the thing you like best about Canada. :)

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Q&A

Q: Will Senator Tom Coburn (R-Epugnant) ever stop making an enormous ass of himself during important public hearings by awkwardly making facile points about "freedom" that pander to the most juvenile, reactionary, sloganeering nincompoops among the Republican constituency?

A: No.

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Assvertising: VicRoads' "Stop the Gingas" Campaign

by Shaker oatsofwrath

[Trigger warning for bullying and dehumanization of red-heads.]

Controversy over new road safety ad campaigns is fairly common in Australia. These campaigns are usually funded by our State Governments, and the newest ad campaign by VicRoads, the road authority in Victoria (one of the most populous Australian states – its capital city is Melbourne), is generating quite a number of complaints. The two new film advertisements in VicRoads' new campaign centre on ridiculing people with red hair.

Exhibit One:

This one shows two white people with red hair in bed, a man and a woman, engaging in some sort of sexual activity (the ad plays on the incredibly original "women don't enjoy sex" trope, as the woman looks terribly bored by whatever is happening underneath the covers, as well as the "sex-happens-to-a-woman" trope, as she is having something "done" to her, rather than being an active participant), and the voiceover says: "Every time you use your mobile phone whilst driving, gingas get fresh, with other gingas. Don't be a dickhead. Don't use your phone." Then, in the 'small print' sort of voice, it quickly and quietly says, "Using your phone whilst driving may or may not result in gingas getting fresh".

Take-home message: People with red hair are ugly and disgusting, and no one wants to think about them "getting fresh".

Also, there's the oblique implication that a man and a woman (who will be presumed to by cis by most viewers) with red hair having sex together is particularly bad because they might just breed and then there will be MORE of them. There's a word for one group of (privileged) people trying to exert control over the reproductive behaviours and outcomes of another group of (marginalized) people, and it's pretty gross that eugenics would be played for laughs.

Exhibit Two:


This one shows the red-headed man from the first advert, just standing there, looking gormless as white wings sprout from his shoulder blades, as the voiceover says, "Every time you use a phone whilst driving, a redhead gets its wings. Don't be a dickhead. Don't use your phone".

"Its" wings. People with red hair aren't even really people, they're/we're* THINGS.

Obviously, VicRoads is aware of the bullying and hatred experienced by people with red hair, because otherwise, the ads wouldn't make any sense—not that they "make sense" exactly, but if red-headed people weren't treated with hatred and disgust, it wouldn't be seen as a bad thing for them to be "getting fresh" and possibly multiplying, and it wouldn't be bad for them to "get their wings", whatever the heck that's supposed to mean.

Hatred toward people with red hair may not be as bad in Australia as it is elsewhere (as in Scotland, where nearly 10% of the population has red hair, and the bullying of red-heads can be positively vicious), but it still exists, and plenty of people report being bullied as children because of their hair colour, as well as facing ongoing discrimination as adults. And this ad campaign seems to be actively encouraging that bullying, hatred, disgust, and prejudice.

Additionally, this campaign has been criticised for its use of the word "dickhead" because it's a swear word – though the word is quite obviously also problematic because it genders an undesirable behaviour, despite the irrelevance of gender when it comes to using a mobile phone whilst driving.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has received a number of complaints about this campaign, but they have no power to pull the ad. Of course, the ad has gone viral (as was intended) which makes it practically impossible to "pull". Complaints have also been lodged with the Advertising Standards Bureau, but apparently the ads do not contravene the code of ethics because red hair is not a disability, nor do these ads constitute discrimination, apparently.

There are a number of ways for Shakers to get in contact with VicRoads – this is a link to the 'Contact Us' section of their website, where you will find an online form you can use.

------------------------------------

* I have red hair by henna, rather than by birth. I note this because, although I have had some crappy things said to me because of my hair colour, I am not in a position to share personal stories of bullying and discrimination people with red hair face, particularly during their school years. I do indeed have what I can only describe as "brunette privilege", so I welcome contributions from natural red-heads speaking to their experiences.

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Open Thread

Hosted by a windup Bob-omb.

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Top Chef Open Thread

Chef Eric Ripert requests the honor of your presence in the Top Chef Open Thread.

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Question of the Day

What's the next movie on your Netflix queue?

(Naturally, you don't have to actually subscribe to Netflix to answer the question. It's really just about the next movie you plan to watch, in whatever fashion.)

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Discussion Thread: Dexamethasone and "Fixing" Broken Girls

Recently Alice Dreger and Ellen K. Feder called our attention to a terrible medical malfeasance regarding FGC at Cornell University. They are now, with their colleague Anne Tamar-Mattis, sending up flares about the use of dexamethasone, "a risky Class C steroid," which is apparently being offered (I use the word advisedly) to pregnant women whose female fetuses are suspected of having a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which can result in "ambiguous" or "masculinized" genitalia.

And that's not all:

One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.

...They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation. The authors write, "Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls ... and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization."

...And it isn't just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled "What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?" Meyer-Bahlburg writes that "CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups."

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls' behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: "Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior."

Further, these women might have a disproportionate and "abnormal" interest in "men's occupations and games." The authors of this piece note the irony of "one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists and a member of the National Academy of Sciences constructing women who go into 'men's' fields as 'abnormal'," and conclude the article thus:

Needless to say, we do not think it reasonable or just to use medicine to try to prevent homosexual and bisexual orientations. Nor do we think it reasonable to use medicine to prevent uppity women, like the sort who might raise just these kinds of alarms. Consider that our declaration of our conflict of interest.

Suffice it to say, for my part, I share their contempt.

A couple of brief notes:

1. I feel obliged to point out that there's no objective reason to solve the "problem(s)" of atypical genitals, bi- or homosexuality, women who are single and/or childless by choice, or in some other way deviate from the kyriarchal narratives of what "normal womanhood" should look like. It is because of our rigid heteronormative gender binary, and the prejudices that arise therefrom, that these things are "problems," but the privileges we confer are arbitrary, based on collective inventions, and they can be changed. It is enormously frustrating when scientists treat natural variation as a problem to be solved, and necessarily deny humans' capacity for ideological adaptation in order to sustain that pretense.

2. Similarly frustrating is the discordance in which Alice Dreger could be so right on calling out this shit, and yet so wrong in defending J. Michael Bailey's transsexual dichotomy theories as merely saying "unpopular things." (Autumn's got more in her archives.) That's not really here nor there in terms of the particular piece being discussed, but it's certainly a failure that needs to be acknowledged in this space.

[H/T to Shaker Tia.]

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Texting! With Liss and Deeky!

Moments ago.

Liss: Is the fucking day over yet?

Deeky: Yeah, pretty much.

Liss: LOL!

Deeky: It's almost five. Fuck this day.

Liss: Seriously. I'm so bored and low-level agitated.

Deeky: You should buy a punching bag.

Liss: I wouldn't even punch it with the mood I'm in. I'd just glower at it with contempt.

Deeky: LOL!

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Daily Dose o' Cute

Dudley, in morning light, last weekend.

Bonus Dudz below the fold.

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Is This What We Call A Backlash?

Today's headlines:

Montana GOP Releases Antigay Platform

Carrie Prejean to Opposite Marry at Prop 8 Supporter's Hotel

R.I. Gov Vetoes Hate-Crimes Bill

NH GOP Congressional Candidate Bob Giuda Compares Gay Marriage to Marrying 'Men and Sheep', 'Women and Dogs'

Australian PM Repeats Gay Marriage Opposition

Wisconsin Supreme Court Votes 7-0 to Uphold Ban on Gay Marriage

Income Tax Fairness Stripped from N.Y. Budget Bill

When I was discussing this with Liss earlier, she respoded: "If it's not, it's only because there hasn't been enough forward (ho)momentum in terms of actually legalizing same-sex marriage (as opposed to the surge in public support for it) to justify calling this a backlash. Grumble. Spit. Snarl. It's more like a bunch of bigoted fucks thrashing around desperately in anticipation of losing a battle they were never going to win anyway."

Yeah, that about says it all.

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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 (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]

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Shaker Help Request

Shaker M emails:

I have a question that I was wondering if you could answer or post on Shakesville. I have this amazing, wonderful, sensitive little boy - he's 8 - who had a great teacher this last year who led him to really develop his commitment to the environment. (We have a rockin' elementary school.)

Anyway, yesterday afternoon my husband came in from work and he and I began updating each other on the latest awful things we'd heard about the oil volcano in the Gulf of Mexico. My little boy was in the kitchen, reading at the counter, and a few minutes later I realized he was absolutely weeping. I went to ask him what was wrong and saw that he was also shaking like a leaf... anyway, he finally managed to tell me, "I'm scared of the oil spill." I felt dreadful for frightening him so. The only thing that made him feel better at all was when I told him we could try to donate money or time or whatever to an organization working to fight / contain / negate the disaster... we live in New Mexico, so we probably can't help clean oily birds.

So, as a reader of your blog, it struck me that you or members of your community might have suggestions about concrete ways we can help. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, and make my little guy a bit less scared.

Have at it, Shakers!

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13-Year-Old Girl Humiliated for Being Insufficiently USian

In an increasingly familiar fit of the nationalistic racism I'll call Illegal Alarmism, a 13-year-old US citizen of Mexican heritage was marched in front of her class and accused of being an undocumented immigrant by her teacher for wearing a Team Mexico football shirt.

[Diana Aviles] said the teacher singled out her daughter in front of the class and accused of her being an illegal immigrant while the girl was wearing the shirt for the World Cup soccer tournament.

"Basically, she put her down in front of the whole class," Aviles said Thursday.

Aviles said she and her daughter are U.S. citizens. The teacher later apologized.

Hmm. I wonder if she would have apologized if the girl had been an undocumented immigrant—because what the teacher did wouldn't have been acceptable even if she hadn't been denying her student's citizenry. (For a whole lot of reasons, not least of which is that a 13-year-old doesn't become an undocumented immigrant by her own design.)

And, in addition to wondering why anyone would ever try to turn someone's immigration status into an insult, as if the rest of us have some choice over where we're born and what opportunities we're given, I also wonder why the fuck anyone who holds such an absurd opinion and works in the public sector serving children, among whom might be undocumented immigrants or the children of undocumented immigrants, would express that view as if it has any business existing outside the confines of an impenetrably bigoted head.

Aviles said her family visits an orphanage in Mexico, and so they bought a "Mexico" shirt. The family also tried to buy a "USA" shirt, but none were available, she said.

I just feel bad that she even had to say this, as if there would be something wrong with wanting a football strip other than Team USA's. Iain—who, rest assured, has proven his sufficient USianness by purchasing a Team USA jersey already—has commented several times that he likes the strips of other countries as we watch World Cup matches. If they weren't ridiculously expensive, he'd no doubt have jerseys from all over the world.

Which, frankly, strikes me as way more "American" (fist-bump the melting pot!) than humiliating a child, no less erroneously so, for the grievous sin of not having been born here.

[H/T to Shaker Maria, who notes: "If you value your sanity/faith in humanity, don't read the comments. However, if you read Spanish, it's worth glancing through the comments on the Spanish-language version of the story, if only because the contrast is amusing."]

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Wednesday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky's Giant Gardening Gloves.

Recommended Reading:

Curgoth: Authoritarian Apologism and the Logical Fallacy [TW for reference to rape]

Cara: Scotland Anti-Rape Ad Tackles "She Was Asking For It" Myth [TW for rape]

Lesley: Huge, Episode 1: Goonies never say die. [TW for discussions of disordered eating]

Resistance: Freedom for...?

Shark-fu: Pondering Opposition...

Tigtog: Climbing Uluru and Disrespect

Andy: Australia's New Prime Minister Confirms She's Against Gay Marriage

Leave your links in comments...

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