Scissor Sisters: "Filthy/Gorgeous"
Two Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Scissor Sisters: "Filthy/Gorgeous"
Headline of the Day
"Should BP Nuke Its Leaking Well?" Oh, why the hell not? How much worse could that make everything?
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, producers of the new Benjamin H. Grumbles hit single, "Unhand My Monocle, Man!"
Recommended Reading:
Marcella: Carnival Against Sexual Violence 96 [TW]
Andy: Ireland Passes Civil Partnership Bill
Resistance: Good News! The R-Word Has Lost Its Edge.
Echidne: Where the Republicans Are
Arturo: M. Night vs. The Internet: The Airbender Mash-Up
Angry Asian Man: Coming to a Theater Near You: Asians!
Bree: 80's Hair Band Rockers Pay Tribute to "Fat Chicks"
Leave your links in comments...
Quote of the Day
"I don't really understand it, but I like what they stand for. They just support everything I'm looking for—lower taxes, less government. All the good things, you know."—Terry Rushing, 63, of Greensburg, Louisiana, on why he considers himself a supporter of the Tea Party movement.
ACLU Issues Travel Alerts for Arizona
American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in at least 30 U.S. states are issuing 'travel alerts' for the 4th of July weekend, informing those who will be on the road in the Southwest of their legal rights if they are stopped in the state of Arizona.
A recently enacted law in that state, SB 1070, requires law enforcement agents to demand proof of being in the U.S. legally from anyone who they suspect may not be. What might cause an officer of the law to suspect that you are the sort of person they should demand papers of?
Well, we're all comfortable leaving that up to each officer's personal judgment, aren't we? But it is totes not going to be based on racial profiling. We've had Arizona governor Jan Brewer's word for that. Said Brewer:
It wouldn't matter if you are Latino or Hispanic or Norwegian. If you didn't have proof of citizenship and the police officer had reasonable suspicion, he would ask and verify your citizenship. I mean, that's the way that it is.Got that, Norwegians? You are not off the hook.
The law does not take effect until July 29, but the ACLU is concerned that some law enforcement officers may be honing their reasonable suspicion in order to have it razor-sharp on the big day. The ACLU notes there is a history in Arizona of widespread racial profiling, particularly in Maricopa County, the fiefdom of self-worshipping Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Then, too, the Fourth of July is a celebration of independence, and some folks can't fully enjoy their freedom without a twist of coercion.
How better to intensify the savor of freedom for patriotic Arizonans than by confining any who can be suspected — reasonably! — of not being entitled to enjoy it? And by doing it boldly, warrantlessly, without evidence of their having committed a crime, or even of a crime having been committed — other than the crime of suspicious paperlessness. Ah, that's a spicy freedom-stew fit for a celebration!
The ACLU has available for download (.pdf) a card which can be folded and carried in your wallet, with instructions in both English and Spanish on dealing with vehicle stops and questioning by police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, or the F.B.I. The information is applicable to dealing with law enforcement in any U.S. state.
More information about the ACLU’s campaign against SB 1070, including a lawsuit they have filed with other civil rights organizations challenging the law's constitutionality, can be found here.
Material informing individuals of their rights when stopped by law enforcement, optimized for mobile devices, is available here: in English and en Español.
Happy Independence Day, U.S. Shakers!
(Independence may be celebrated each and every day here at Shakesville. Documentation not required. Residency in the U.S. not required. Willingness to support and celebrate others' independence as well as your own required.)
Of Red Spots and Rape Narratives
[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]
Yes, this is a brilliant tool and we should definitely use it to determine if someone is a rapist or not (that was sarcasm):
An acupuncturist who claims she can detect a man's virginity based on a small dot on the ear has become a minor celebrity in Vietnam, where she is credited with helping to free three convicted rapists from prison.Oh, well, as long as she's convinced, then that's all that matters.
Traditional medicine practitioner Pham Thi Hong started lobbying for the men's release, pleading their case all the way to the president, because she believes all three men are virgins and therefore could not be guilty of rape.
"They all had small red spots on the back of their ears," said Hong, 54. "The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience told me that these men did not have sex before."
...She says she was first taught how to determine if a man has ever had sex by feeling their pulse. She later developed the ear-spot method on her own. She says the spot will only disappear after heterosexual intercourse and is not affected by gay sex or masturbation.
..."I have never heard of this method before," said Nguyen Van Hao, 60, an acupuncturist who has practiced for 14 years. "From the medical point of view, it's impossible to determine whether a man has had sex or not by feeling the pulse or examining the red spot on their ears."
Hong, however, said she's convinced her method works after years of testing it on her students.
Listen, I don't want to get into a big debate about whether this could actually be a viable test for determining a man's "heterosexual virginity" or not (and that will be considered off-topic in comments), because, the truth is, it doesn't fucking matter. Even if it were a legitimate way of assessing whether a man had ever "had sex with" a woman before, that is not synonymous with assessing whether he is a rapist.
Penetrative rape can be committed with hands/fingers/tongue and it can be committed with a foreign object. The entire premise that a man who didn't penetrate a woman with his penis couldn't possibly have raped her is bullshit, so any "virginity test" is thoroughly irrelevant.
And if we are to imagine, for a moment, that it is possible to assess whether a man has lost his "heterosexual virginity" by examining his ear, why is it, I wonder, that are we to understand that rape is not one of the exceptions, along with homosexual sex and masturbation, which supposedly render the telltale spot unaffected.
The concept seems to be that only heterosexual intercourse changes that spot, but rape is, of course, not heterosexual intercourse—and diverges more widely and certainly from consensual heterosexual sex than consensual homosexual sex does.
To accept the premise that it is the nature of the sexual activity which changes that spot, one must accept a false equivalence between consensual sexual activity and rape.
An equivalence that necessarily suggests that both gay sex and masturbation are more deviant from consensual hetero sex than is rape.
If we are to believe that our bodies can reveal truths, my body has revealed to me the truth that consensual homosexual sexual activity is not fundamentally different from consensual heterosexual activity, that masturbation is different in both superficial and meaningful but obvious ways, and that rape doesn't even belong on the same goddamn page with any of the above.
This observation ought to be self-evident. But that's why this story is a perfect example of why challenging the myths and narratives of the rape culture is so important: Only in a culture where it is believed that demonstrable virginity is axiomatic proof of innocence of rape, and only in a culture where consensual sex can be viewed as not materially different from rape, could anyone believe for a moment in the value of examining the red spot behind a man's ear for evidence of his virginity, in relation to the commission of a rape.
[H/T to Shaker Brian G.]
Open Thread
Hosted by the greatest Kool-Aid flavor ever, Purplesaurus Rex.
It's super fruity! Just like Deeky.
Question of the Day
Given the below post, I thought I'd recycle this one from 2008, along with my then-answer (which remains my now-answer)...
What actor makes you refuse to see a film?
I can think of a lot of celebrities cum pseudo-actors (a la Paris Hilton) whose personas, despite my best attempts to always try to separate the artist from hir work, I find so obnoxious I wouldn't want to see any film in which they'd been cast, but they tend to make the type of shit I wouldn't want to see, anyway.
Of serious actors, I can't really think of anyone so objectionable I'd flatly refuse to watch any film that included them in the cast, although it would have to be an incredibly compelling project for me to spend money or time on anything featuring Mel Gibson.
Oh, Mel Gibson
[Trigger warning for sexual violence and racism.]
Given that he's a conservative Catholic, I'm sure there are a lot of things on which Mel Gibson and I would disagree.
Among them is our disagreement that the best way to follow-up his 2006 scandal—in which he got pulled over for a DUI, went on an anti-Semitic rant, and yelled at a female sergeant, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"—was by imploding his marriage by having a baby with a woman other than his wife, and then reportedly physically abusing the mother of his new baby daughter and screaming at her delightful things like: "You look like a fucking pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n****rs, it will be your fault."
This Train Wreck: "At least I'm not Mel Gibson!"
Be patriotic. Or else.
[Trigger warning for violent imagery.]
A couple days ago FOX, that ever objective and factual news station, ran a story called:
"School Officials in Mass. Town Won't Let Students Recite Pledge of Allegiance"Guess what happened. I'll give you three but I'm sure you only need one:
Arlington police are investigating threatening messages sent to School Committee members yesterday in response to a controversy surrounding reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school.Ah, yes. There's some patriotism for you. Or not.
Police Captain Robert Bongiorno would not specify which committee members received the messages, but he said some were anti-Semitic.
“The messages are offensive and hateful and potentially criminal,’’ Bongiorno said.
Police launched the investigation as school officials blasted what they said were incorrect reports by Fox News that the School Committee had banned the pledge in Arlington schools.
“It is unfortunate that the national media has chosen to distort this very serious debate in a manner which so badly misinforms the public,’’ committee chairman Joseph Curro said in a press release yesterday. “Recent reports have done little to present the facts . . . and have been seized upon by many people throughout the country to target our dedicated school leaders with unwarranted hate mail and threats.’’
As the Globe reported yesterday, controversy about reciting the pledge in Arlington schools began last week when Arlington High School senior Sean Harrington requested that the pledge be led each day at school. The Pledge of Allegiance has not been said at the high school for years, and the School Committee voted 3-to-3 on a motion that would have required a daily, but voluntary, recitation of the pledge to be led over the intercom. Because of the tie vote, the motion failed.
School Committee members said they would look into enacting a pledge policy this summer, and on Tuesday, Arlington High principal Charles Skidmore told the Globe he would lead the pledge in the school’s auditorium every morning for students who wished to say it. Harrington said he still wants the pledge broadcast into each classroom.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Curro said that since incorrect reports by Fox News that Arlington had banned the pledge, committee members have been receiving messages from “all over the country.’’
Curro said a couple of the messages sent to committee members included indirect threats and one said the members should go to North Korea, where their throats would be slit.
According to this RawStory article:
At a school committee meeting last week, Harrington delivered what a story in the Arlington Patch described as "an impassioned speech ... reminding the members that 'freedom is not free.'" The committee ultimately deadlocked, however, on a proposal for a voluntary recitation of the Pledge to be led each day over the intercom, with some members expressing concerns about infringing on the rights of students and teachers who did not wish to participate.Nice. I'm sure Mr. Harrington was duly upset about such actions from his supporters, right?
"The exchange that followed the vote became quite heated," the Patch reports, "with Harrington's supporters vocalizing their disapproval and shouting expletives at the Committee."
"They told us to go back to our own countries," Chairman Curro told the Globe.
"I was really heartbroken," Harrington said of the deadlocked vote. "It's hard to think that something so traditional in American society was turned down. ... It tells me that we've basically cast aside what our country is founded on."Well then. The tie vote on forcing people to listen to the pledge every day tells me that some people on the committee are reasonable. Harrington's statement, however, tells me that I'm right to be a bit concerned about his school's history program, though the drama program seems to have at least one star here.
And I don't have to imagine that Harrington and I do not see eye to eye on the pledge issue.
The Reluctant Activist
Constance McMillen didn't want to become an activist. She just wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom.
We all know how that turned out. But something kind of cool happened along the way: In the months since McMillen was nudged into the spotlight, she has become a nationally recognized activist for LGBT causes. And the activism is something she's not only embraced, but has no plans on giving up:
I know I will continue to be an activist because through all of this, I have met a lot of people. I have heard a lot of horror stories so it's really made me realize how important it is to be an activist. Because, you hear some of these stories and you are like, 'how can you not be an activist?' You know, because some of them are really heartbreaking.
Wow. I have nothing but respect for this woman.
[Via Andy.]
SYTYCD: Alex & Twitch
So this year the contestants are paired up (by hat draw) with "All Stars" from previous seasons. Alex drew Twitch and the show really played up and irritated the shit out of me with "Haw haw, two dudes together! The dude ballet dancer with the hip hop dancer! Haw!" (I'm especially looking at you, Nigel, you creepy lecherous jackass).
It was anything but "haw haw". It was FANTASTIC:
Alex didn't just "hold his own". He fucking OWNED the whole damn thing.
Quote of the Day
"Dr. Rowlands says—echoing a chorus of men before him—when it comes to women, there's a great deal that sports scientists 'just don't understand'."—Gretchen Reynolds, in the New York Times, in a piece observing that pretending there's a default human body from which all understanding of other human bodies can be extrapolated doesn't work out all that well, as it turns out.
The "joke" about men bemoaning the mysteriousness of women was as unnecessary as it was apparently irresistible.
[H/T to Shaker The Bald Soprano.]
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.]
You Know What You Should Buy?
The new CD by the Scissor Sisters: Night Work.
It's awesome. Especially if you like the Pet Shop Boys, or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Or Erasure. Or Yaz. Or anything synthy and electro. It's produced by Stuart Price (AKA Thin White Duke, AKA Les Rythmes Digitales, AKA the guy who helped Madonna turn out the best album of her career), whom I referred to yesterday as "the new Giorgio Moroder but without the giant 1970s moustache" which is a huge compliment.
I've been listening to it all day.
[Cross-posted.]
Action Item
Shaker GimliGirl emails (which I am publishing with her permission):
Just got a heads up via Survival International.org regarding an indigenous tribe in India who are facing aggressive attempts to force them into the "mainstream," including splitting up families by taking children away into residential schools. I couldn't read the whole thing before I was in tears. I go to a university that used to BE a residential school. Many of my classmates are school survivors or children or grandchildren of residential school survivors; I've heard more stories than I ever cared to about drug and alcohol abuse, physical and emotional abuse, and suicide. The damage done by these systems cannot be underestimated and cannot be allowed to be inflicted on yet another indigenous people who are vulnerable due to their lack of contact with the modern world. Please share this with Shakesville.As requested.
Survival International recommends helping in the following ways:- Donate to Survival’s campaign for the Jarawa and other threatened tribal peoples
- Write to the Indian government using Survival’s online letter-writing tool
- Write to your MP or MEP (UK) or Senators and members of Congress (US).
- Write to your local Indian high commission or embassy
I Write Letters
Dear Landlords,
I would like to request that in future, when someone is to be given the key to the elevator (at $MY_ADDRESS) to reserve it for their own use for an indefinite time (ostensibly to move out, but being done in such a way as to keep the elevator out of service for anyone else for the maximum time – loading directly into the elevator from the apartment’s rooms and directly into the truck from the elevator, rather than using the hallway to stage the move), that the tenants be given at least a day’s notice of same, as we are with other events in the building, such as turning off the water or clearing the parking lot.
While it might be a matter of no moment for most tenants to have the elevator out of service, for those of us living with physical disabilities, the elevator is a crucial element of the building’s services, besides being listed in the Tenant Agreement (section 12) as a right of tenancy.
All it would take is the few moments to put up signs saying that the elevator will be out of service for a certain number of hours on a certain day, before the day. Then those of us for whom “please take the stairs” is a cruel joke rather than an invitation would have a chance to arrange our days accordingly, rather than finding out as a nasty surprise on arriving home.
It would be better still, of course, if those moving in and out could be asked to be considerate of other tenants (by staging the move: apartment to hallway, call the elevator, move into the elevator, arrive in lobby, unload elevator, release it, and move the stuff to the truck), but I expect that's too much consideration of the needs of others to expect in 2010.
Given that the presence of the elevator was one of the central services to interest me in living in this building, as opposed to other buildings of similar size which are “walk-ups”, I don’t feel it’s unreasonable that the needs of your differently-abled tenants be given the same consideration as all the others in the building.
Thank you,
(CaitieCat)
Discussion Thread: Work of Art
[Trigger warning for sexual assault, clergy abuse, and transphobia.]
Is anyone else as morbidly fascinated with the Bravo reality competition trainwreck "Work of Art" as I am? I hope so, because I really want to talk about last night's episode.
Some background for those who aren't watching the show: It's a reality/game show in which a dozen or so artists compete for a monetary prize and the title of Bestest Artist or wev, a la "Top Chef" or "Project Runway," except instead of geoduck or silk chiffon, the contestants are working with paint and cameras and concrete. To build concrete buttholes. No, really. (That's how the artist described them; I'm not being cheeky. Ahem.)
And, as you'd expect from the "progressive, edgy" art world, the first three challenges were won by young white men, while the contestants who went home were, in order: A black woman, an Asian man, and a white woman over 50. To be clear, the concrete butthole work pictured above was one of the winners.
Now, I readily admit I'll totes be the last one out of the Matrix, but this show is just absurd. (Which, I'll be honest, is mainly why I'm enjoying it so much.)
And last night it got even absurder when Andres "Piss Christ" Serrano showed up as guest judge, and the contestants were instructed that their new challenge was to create something "shocking." Really? This is how art works? Go create something "shocking" on demand!
Because that quite evidently isn't how art works, the artists commanded to conceive of something deliberately and consciously outrageous—as opposed to creating something with the purpose of expression, which may be shocking as a by-product of that expression—the majority of the concepts were juvenile, calculated, and painfully obvious; they had all the subtlety of a hammer being applied directly to the skull.
There was a lot of sexually-themed work (really? sex is still "shocking"?), and three different men did images of sexual assaults. One did a photograph of himself as a "tranny" (his word) being strangled with cum all over his face. One did a poster with "Sex Education" scrawled above the image of what was supposed to be a priest in bed with a little boy, with a cross hanging over the bed. And another did a series of three photographs—the first of a torn little girl's dress, the second of torn and bloodied little girl's panties, and the third of a deflated red balloon.
Ugh.
None of them won, and none of them lost. I guess that makes sexual assault art the Goldilocks of shockitude. Or something.
I also "loved" the work of the woman who takes naked pictures of herself, typically in voyeuristic scenes where she's meant to appear drunk and/or sexually vulnerable, being described as "the feminist perspective." Of course, that was according to the guy whose work was called "My Tranny Porno Fantasy," so take that with a grain of stupid.
Discuss.
Your Insult's So Fat It Needs More Gender Essentialism
[General trigger warning.]
So, there's a video going 'round the intertubes today called The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time. My first thought was: I wonder how many of these great insults include references to mothers?
Answer: Lots of 'em.
Also very popular: References to cocksucking, men who are missing parts of their own genitalia (dickless or lacking balls) or who are themselves actually woman's cunts/twats/pussies, rape threats, and disablism.
