This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky's Denim iPhone covers. (Bedazzling extra.)
Recommended Reading:
Michelle: Haitian Moms Still Need Health Care
Andy: Ireland's Civil Partnership Bill Signed into Law
Vesta44: Need to lose weight? Neurologist advises stop eating – period. [Trigger warning for disordered eating.]
Fannie: Conservative Christian Humor [Trigger warning for homophobia and racism.]
Roxie: Review of The Kids Are All Right [Spoiler warning, but nothing that wasn't evident if you've watched the trailer.]
Phil: Mac Attack [Drooooooooooooooooooooooool...]
Leave your links in comments...
Monday Blogaround
I Write White
UPDATE: I originally misattributed a quote from a post at tea berry-blue to a commenter here. I have corrected the error. Apologies.
Benjamin H. Grumbles is not the only one around here who is both mischievous and empirical. After reading our thread here about the I Write Like test and a related link at Tiger Beatdown, shaker biblio_vore performed an experiment:
[W]hen you shared your result from "I Write Like" I got curious and tried out my own writing -- different types of writing yielded a different white male author each time. And when I saw a link on Tiger Beatdown that said that according to "I Write Like," everyone writes like a white male author, I decided to try it out with the famous authors themselves, because the experiment that Jonathan Bogart did used less than a dozen authors. My results were pretty depressing: few women, no authors of color. Here's the writeup I did of my experiment [...]:
I tried out 40 authors on this thing. I did twenty that were women and/or authors of color, and twenty that were white men. Here are my results.
Group One: Female authors and authors of color
1. James Baldwin (black man) ... James Fenimore Cooper (white man)
2. Mary Shelley (white woman) ... herself
3. Isabel Allende (Latina woman) ... Kurt Vonnegut (white man)
4. Maeve Binchy (white woman) ... William Gibson (white man)
5. Stephenie Meyer (white woman) ... herself
6. Madeleine L'Engle (white woman) ... J.D. Salinger (white man)
7. Flannery O'Connor (white woman) ... Chuck Palahniuk (white man)
8. Sylvia Plath (white woman) ... Chuck Palahniuk (white man)
9. Margaret Atwood (white woman) ... herself
10. Sandra Cisneros (Latina woman) ... Chuck Palahniuk (white man)
11. Laurence Yep (Asian man) ... James Joyce (white man)
12. Amy Tan (Asian woman) ... Dan Brown (white man)
13. J.K. Rowling (white woman) ... herself
14. Toni Morrison (black woman) ... David Foster Wallace (white man)
15. Maya Angelou (black woman) ... Ursula K. Le Guin (white woman)
16. Alice Walker (black woman) ... H.P. Lovecraft (white man)
17. Langston Hughes (black man) ... Margaret Mitchell (white woman -- the GONE WITH THE WIND author)
18. Zora Neale Hurston (black woman) ... Margaret Mitchell (white woman -- what the EFF?!)
19. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Latino man) ... Mark Twain (white man)
20. Jhumpa Lahiri (South Asian woman) ... Dan Brown (white man)
Group Two: White male authors
1. Charles Dickens ... himself
2. Aldous Huxley ... Robert Louis Stevenson (white man)
3. George Orwell ... himself
4. Mark Twain ... himself
5. Edgar Allen Poe ... Charles Dickens (white man)
6. Orson Scott Card ... David Foster Wallace (white man)
7. Neil Gaiman ... himself
8. Douglas Adams ... himself
9. Dan Brown ... himself
10. Ray Bradbury ... himself
11. Philip Pullman ... H.P. Lovecraft (white man)
12. Terry Pratchett ... David Foster Wallace (white man)
13. Michael Chabon ... Kurt Vonnegut (white man)
14. Paul Auster ... Arthur C. Clarke (white man)
15. Gregory Maguire ... Dan Brown (white man)
16. Kenneth Grahame ... Lewis Carroll (white man)
17. Leo Tolstoy ... himself
18. Mervyn Peake ... Charles Dickens (white man)
19. William Makepeace Thackeray: Jonathan Swift (white man)
20. Thomas Hardy ... Mark Twain (white man)
In the first group, only four authors were recognized by the "I Write Like" statistical analysis tool, while in the second group twice as many authors were recognized. Furthermore, the authors recognized in the first group were all white women, despite my inclusion of authors of color who are both prolific and award winning. It creeps me the heck out that MARGARET MITCHELL was the result for Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
Forty authors put into the program. Twenty six results given back. All white. Mostly men. And yeah, the takeaway from this could be that it's fun and amusing and very obviously not accurate, but I hope that what I'm conveying here is that this does matter. How many authors that aren't white had their body of work analyzed to help produce this fun little tool? How many women? "White and male" isn't the default setting for humanity, and it isn't the default setting for literature, either.
In the "We Are All Great Men" thread, shaker bexone links to a post by tea berry-blue:
The creator of this meme doesn't see a problem with the fact that his list of authors consists of 37 white men and 3 white women. In fact, when called on it, he said "I *absolutely* will not add people into the database due to their race or gender. I will not search for lists of white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or any other types of people that you _took care to differentiate_."
Hm. Well, I don't need to search any lists to know that Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Isabel Allende, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Erdrich, and many others have distinctive voices worth sampling. I Write Like thinks that David Foster Wallace writes like Stephen King. I think the test would have been more accurate and more useful as well as more entertaining if it included a wider variety of strong voices.
If you had designed this test, who would you have sampled besides the Great Whites?
H/T, of course, to biblio_vore
Feminism 101: Female Friendship Myths
So. There are a lot of pernicious myths about friendships with and between women. (Requisite Caveat: That is not to say there are no damaging myths about friendships with and between men; I'm just not talking about those today.) These myths take many shapes and forms with specific details—same-sex friendship among women are inexorably plagued by jealousy and competition; same-sex friendship among women always involve hurtful gossip; opposite-sex friendship between men and women is never real, because there is always sexual tension (note the assumed heteronormativity of the "When Harry Met Sally" myth); opposite-sex friendship can't last long-term, because women and men are intrinsically too different, etc.—they always boil down to these two lessons:
1. Women can't be friends with women.
2. Women can't be friends with men.
In pop culture, these lessons are drilled into girls' heads in myriad ways: Stories of (straight) female friendship are driven by conflicts specific to (straight) womanhood—jealousy over the same man, unnavigable divides caused by divergent choices about career/marriage/motherhood, acrimonious resentments about choosing the same wedding day or venue or dress—and stories of (straight) opposite-sex friendships are framed as foreplay to a grand romance, whether the inevitable couple realizes soulmatery was in front of them all along (!) or whether the (straight) female character is a token among men (Leia, Eowyn, Sue Storm) who is eventually rewarded for her strength and bravery with the romantic affections of a (male) hero.
There is a lot for which to rightfully criticize Sex and the City, but it was remarkably transgressive in its ability to represent lasting (straight) female friendships among women who make different personal choices without ever condescending to make them bicker over a man, or irreparably ruin their relationships with one another in a fit of destructive jealousy, or viciously compete for the attainment of some arbitrary level of success. They each had their own objectives, pursued their own resources and romances. That is a rare thing on the pop culture landscape.
Rare, because we wouldn't want girls to get it into their silly little heads that they can have successful friendships with other girls. Or friendships with boys, for that matter.
What we really want is for female-people to retain a profound sense of insecurity in all their friendships at all times, so that they might never be confident and self-determined.
A world full of confident and self-determined women, bolstered by the security and esteem that solid and lasting friendships with people who share their gender and people who don't, would be a very scary thing—what with the likelihood of such a world being an inhospitable environment for a Patriarchy and all.
Thus does the Patriarchy endeavor to entrench at every opportunity the idea that female friendships damaged by gossip or competition or jealousy or betrayal were ruined because that's how female friendships are. Never mind that male friendships are destroyed over the same things. Never mind these are human failures, not female ones.
So divorced are we from the idea that these are the pitfalls of human friendships across every spectrum that even in feminist/womanist spaces, discussions of female friendships will frequently yield comments like, "Well, I have a hard time being friends with women because so many women are gossipy, competitive, jealous bitches."
No. So many people are like that.
That this woman can't successfully be friends with that woman does not mean women can't be friends. It means that those two women can't be friends.
And avoiding women to spend time exclusively in the company of men (who may be free of the stereotypes of relationship-destroying gossip, competitiveness, and jealousy, but aren't any more likely to be individually free of those flaws as are women) is no kind of solution—particularly when the sorts of men who court the friendship of women-hating women require a terrible bargain as the cost of their companionship.
Which may be one of many reasons that some friendships between women and men fall apart.
That this woman and that man can't maintain a friendship does not mean women and men can't be friends. It means that that woman and man can't be friends.
Among my friends are straight, gay, bi- and asexual cis and trans women and men of different colors. Some of these friendships are more than 20 years old. What makes them last is the willingness to see each other as individuals: When I am being an asshole, my behavior is not written off by my friends as the inevitable behavior that ought to be expected from any woman. It is addressed as assholery that is uniquely Melissa McEwan's, and thus has Melissa McEwan the ability to change.
Myths about female friendship exist so that we never have a reason to communicate: There is no point challenging someone's action if you believe it be the natural consequence of their intractable characteristics.
Thus is the most insidious female friendship myth of all that old familiar bit of ugliness that treats "women" as a word for a monolith with a predictable set of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions—and denies actual women their individualism, their humanity.
The truth is that excellent friendships are hard to come by and require effort to nurture and maintain. Most of the people any one individual meets won't be worth that effort, simply by virtue of the enigmatic combination of straightforward compatibility and mysterious chemistry. Some friendships will be finite, combusting spectacularly in a short space of time or fizzling almost imperceptibly into nothingness over time, and some will last a lifetime. Some friendships will be intimate and intense; some will be casual and easy; some will come and go, and come and go, a favorite song on a bad radio signal. Some will become romances; some will come from romances. The best of them will make you a better person. These are the boring realities of one of the most exhilarating and consternating parts of human connection.
Being a woman doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. It's what kind of woman one is that matters.
That is an inconvenient thought for an institutional oppression predicated on denying individualism and humanity.
Which makes just being friends with a(nother) woman a radical act.
I Will Now Buy an iPhone
Because the only app worth owning is finally here: Jay Leno's Garage!
So what if the new iPhone for will burst into flames if you accidentally pick it up with your left hand? Fire extinguishers are go! And this app is smokin' (pun totally intended)!
Stay up to date with Jay Leno's Garage, just like the iTunes store says! Things this app can do (besides make you totally irresistible to the opposite sex, like all good iPhone apps) which you cannot live without:
- Look at hundreds of pictures (and video!) of a billionaire asshole's car collection!
- Read blog posts about a billionaire asshole's car collection!
- Pro-tips like how to chrome your shit up right! (Which is especially useful if you're a billionaire asshole.)
[Cross-posted.]
The NQDTR Discussion Thread - M100719
Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
The Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report - M100719
Time for another Teaspoon Report.
Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
ô,ôP
Kumbayah, My Lord . . .
Mixed news on the "fierce advocacy" front comes from Foreign Policy's Turtle Bay. While the Obama administration is pursuing such actions as fulfilling the Justice Dept.'s responsibility to defend DOMA in court, and allowing the Pentagon to inquire how presumed-to-be-straight-until-being-outed service members feel about sharing barracks with, you know — them, before finally parting with the DADT policy which has served so well to squander highly trained personnel while we've been fighting two wars, somebody — the initiative apparently comes from within the State Dept., given that it is being conducted by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and because, well, that does seem to be the one enclave within the Obama administration where the advocacy has been more than rhetorical — I say, somebody in the administration has engaged the U.S. government in actively supporting a bid by a U.S. gay rights group, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), to be awarded "consultative status" by the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
This would allow the IGLHRC to participate in U.N. meetings on human rights and health issues, among others, as do numerous other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Normally, accreditation of U.N. NGOs is done by a U.N. committee "dominated by socially conservative Islamic governments". This committee has prevented action on the IGLHRC's certification application for over three years. The U.S. government, therefore, is conducting an initiative to get the 54 member states of the ECOSOC as a whole to proceed to grant the IGLHRC's application.
So naturally, patriotic U.S. Congressmen Christopher H. Smith and Trent Franks (both R-uh-roh!) have stepped forward to support our government's action in opposing this potential Muslim menace to freedom, one assumes? Why, of course they have. Er, stepped forward, that is.
By lobbying U.N. members to oppose the U.S. government's initiative. "I respectfully urge you", wrote the two, apparently speaking as one, in a letter to U.N. members, "to refuse attempts to circumvent UN procedure and secure a premature approval of the IGLHRC in the ECOSOC. Preservation of the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of religion require that IGLRHC undergo further review in the standard review process."
That would be the standard review process which has been holding up IGLHRC's application for years now. But what are these "rights of freedom of expression and freedom of religion" which so concern Reps. Smith and Franks? These gentlemen share the concerns of the governments of Egypt and other nations not generally known for their concern for freedom of expression, about principles the IGLHCR has endorsed which urge governments to "ensure that the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression does not violate the rights and freedoms of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities."
Well, it's pretty obvious where that would lead. Wael Attiya, speaking for the Egyptian government in June, was troubled by the possibility that such principles would lead to the persecution of religious leaders who condemn homosexual behavior.If a "preacher says that a relationship between same sex [couples] is wrong, will the preacher be hunted?"
That's what Wael Attiya wants to know, and apparently Reps. Smith and Franks share his concern.
To sum up: While it remains vital to God's plan for ConservoChristians to continue to bomb the shit out of Muslims in as many countries simultaneously as possible, this should not prevent us from uniting with our soon-to-be-consigned-to-Hellfire-for-all-eternity conservative Muslim brothers and sisters in the equally important task of keeping teh gays in their place, while pretending that it is they who are persecuting us (because, let's face it, that gag just never gets old).
Via
Stay Classy, WaPo
Pulitzers for everybody!
I don't know how many of the USians here have memories of waiting for the dentist and trying to solve the "WTF is wrong with this picture" puzzles in Highlights, but this recent Washington Post profile of Robyn Deane, Virginia governor Robert McDonnell's sister-in-law (who happens to be trans) really brings me back (a larger image is in the photo gallery here):
Feel free to play along. Select answers are below the fold.
As I noted above, Robyn Deane is the governor's sister-in-law (not his "brother-in-law").
Robyn Deane is not a man, and therefore not a "man in the process of becoming a woman." Ms. Deane is a woman.
"Transgendered". Enough already with the "transgendered"
"Deane wants Virginia and national lawmakers to pass legislation that prevents discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. She also wants to convince McDonnell to speak publicly about how being gay or transgendered is acceptable.":picture of Deane using hairspray:
Nice. Bonus points for including a picture of Deane with her face contorted and her eyes shut.
Bonus points for pretty much everything else in the gallery, including:
Deane is a woman who wears eyeliner!
Deane also wears nylons!
Deane is so feminine she even likes cats!
Deane also used to look like a dude!
Deane used to have what many people consider to be a dude's name! It was this!
In the first sentence of the profile, we learn that Deane wore heels this one time. And a red raincoat. (Welcome to [usually] acknowledged womanhood.)
Gay rights, LGBT rights, civil rights, whichever.
Gay or transgender, gay and/or transgender. Whichever. :cough:
The first paragraph under the sub-headline "Fighting for the cause" is mostly about Deane's medical concerns. It mentions sex reassignment surgery prior to describing the nature of "the cause".
Deane used to dress like a man, which is totes important because?
This is an article [ostensibly] about civil rights. It is in the Style section.
Bingo! Bingo, like, on multiple cards.
I wonder if anyone at the WaPo realizes the AP puts out an annual guide to not sucking at their job.
One might say that the WaPo buried the lede, but I'm honestly not sure what the lede is. It might be that there's this one activist lady who is distantly related to the governor, or it might be that said lady is ZOMG trans. Clearly, these are both important stories, ripe for trenchant analysis.
A lot of folks have written tons of stuff about the erasure of trans people's identities, Western society's need to portray trans people's identities as artificial, and the dismissal of femininity as artifice (see Julia Serano). I'm not going to get into any of that, partly because I have other work to do, partly because, wow WaPo, you know how to produce instructional tools.
Here's info on contacting the Washington Post. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to wearing women's clothes, or whatever the hell it is that I do.
--
Didja notice the quotes from Democratic gay rights activists who want Ms. Deane to go away on account of how she might distract folks from issues that really matter? :sarcastic swoon:
Via Lynn. Also at Bilerico.
New Caravaggio Discovered
Following up on the recent discovery of Caravaggio's earthly remains, the Vatican newspaper is reporting a previously unknown painting by the Baroque master may have been found. Tentatively titled "The Martyrdom of St Lawrence" the image depicts a mostly-naked man (duh) "with one arm outstretched as he leans over leaping flames beneath him."
Art historians will examine the painting, presumably spending a long time near the cleft of St Lawrence's ass, to determine its authenticity.
[Cross-posted.]
Bring Out the Pulitzers!
This morning, the Washington Post published a report on its two-year investigation into a "top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 [which] has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."
According to the WaPo, this top-secret world "amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight" and after nearly a decade of unprecedented and unchecked spending to fuel seemingly unlimited growth, "the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine."
The fact that there exists in the US a covert anti-terrorism arm of the government that is so vast it can't be coordinated, so disconnected it can't be effective, so lacking in oversight it stands to be easily exploited by the very people from whom it purports to protect the nation, and so flush with cash that there's no incentive to change any of the above, is terrifying.
Of course, it's also something the existence of which we've known since the first term of the Bush administration.
The WaPo, however, began its investigation into this shadowy nightmare only two years ago. Huh. Two years ago, you say? Like, right about just before Bush was to leave office at the end of his second term? Great timing.
Don't get me wrong: I'm glad this story is getting some (more) attention, because it is legitimately a breathtaking model of antidemocratic fuckery—and the oft-promised commitment to transparency that was a hallmark of Candidate Obama's campaign has not been fulfilled by President Obama, who was remarkably keen to adopt the fondness for opacity left behind in the Oval Office by his predecessor.
But seriously. This is shit about which I (and every other lefty political blogger) was writing in 2004—through the Patriot Act, through the Downing Street Memos, through FISA-breaching warrantless wiretapping programs, through Presidential Signing Statements, through National Security Letters, through torture, through extraordinary rendition, through the politicization of the CIA, through the outing of Valerie Plame, through unanswered questions about the laws governing mercenaries private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, through the mysterious disappearance of White House emails, through so many acres of knee-deep bullshit that the archives of this space and every space like it on the internet are full of posts talking about the building conspiracy and its inevitable consequences about which the WaPo is now writing with seriousness after spending years participating in the dismissal as hysterics and lunatics of the people connecting those dots to paint this picture back when it was a doodle, not a fucking mural the size of America.
Welcome back from your dereliction of duty, WaPo. What the fuck are we going to do about it now?
Boo. Hiss.
This weekend, the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team returned home, effectively abandoning their goal of playing in the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester. The US government originally indicated that it would not allow the team back into the country. Even after the US State Department changed course, The UK government refused to issue visas to the team, as it did not recognize the validity of Haudenosaunee passports.
Well that's just great. Hooray for 18th Century diplomacy. Or 21st Century diplomacy. They look a lot a like some times. Ostensibly this is about the need to microchip everything now that 9/11 blahblahblah, but ultimately, the whole fiasco stems from a disagreement on which people are actually, you know, people.
Previously: Last Monday, Last Tuesday, Last Wednesday, Last Thursday, Last Friday
Open Thread
Hosted by the World's Largest Cuckoo Clock.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by timepieces.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
More Rhetorical Questions
Actual Entertainment Weekly cover.
How is this a "First Look at Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern" and not "First Look at a Terrible, Terrible Photoshop of Ryan Reynolds' Face in Some Green Cartoon Bullshit"?
I can play this game, too!
Not an actual cover of Entertainment Weekly.
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.]
