In a 136-page ruling, Judge Vaughn Walker has declared Proposition 8, the measure banning same-sex marriage in California, unconstitutional under both the due-process and equal-protection clauses.
Says the ruling:
"Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8."
Karl Rove is still a lying sack of shit, which goes to prove that we really do need to change the word we use to categorize these Republican fucknecks:
No, using the word "hypocrite" should really be stopped altogether. It’s become a meaningless insult like "Nazi," "bias," or "environmentalist." It actually has some spray back onto its user anyway. Basically pointing out someone is a hypocrite makes you sound like an angsty emo tween. It’s a word we learn in junior high to apply to grownups.
Instead of "hypocrite" I recommend the word "fraud." It sounds bad. Fraud is illegal. Fraud is immoral. And it’s an accurate way of describing hypocrisy without sounding like an irate Justin Bieber fan.
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.]
This blogaround brought to you by K. Blogginz & Co., entirely legal though potentially shitfaced purveyors of the finest in jello beer cubes and rental vehicles, though never to the same customers. We're not that shitfaced. Really, we just kind of have a buzz on.
A father, interviewed by Melissa Jeltsen at the Children's Hospital Boston's pediatric health blog, discusses the change in his understanding necessary for his transition from the father he was raised to be, to the father his daughter needs and deserves in Father of a transgender tween speaks out.
The story of that father's daughter and her treatment to halt puberty until she is old enough to decide on what further medical steps she wants to take in her transition, is here: Children’s gives transgender tween new hope (H/T to Helen Boyd, via FWD)
Womanist Musings — Guest poster Lisa invites submissions for "an anthology of letters and other works created for survivors of sexual violence, from other survivors and allies" which she is editing. Call For Submission - Dear Sister
Womanist Musings — Sparky took a nasty spill at work, and needed the comfort of his Beloved to soothe his pain. Naturally, his colleagues and the hospital staff immediately set about bringing them together. Oh, wait — they're gay. Spark of Wisdom: Gay Men Have Husbands as Next of Kin.
Consortiumnews.com — Big Oil has been threatening the coastal Louisiana homeland of Native Americans for years. Dennis Bernstein talks to members of several tribes about their struggle to protect their homes and sacred sites from the BP spill and the maneuvering of outsiders: BP Oil Spill Threatens Bayou Tribes.
Forward/FWD — s.e. also encourages us USians to urge our Senators to support HR3101, the House version of legislation which will move us closer to the provision of captions on video content generated for the internet. s.e. provides an explanation and a sample letter for guidance. US Action Item: Encourage the Senate to Adopt HR3101
What sort of thought process goes on in the minds of evo-psych cultists proponents, you may have asked yourself on occasion. Then, if you're like me, you have concluded that those are dark and scary caverns which you don't care to venture far into. But Shaker Flewellyn is more intrepid, has followed the intellectual droppings as far as the cliffs of reason, and lived to tell the tale in Late night thoughts: Evo-psych in a nutshell (H/T to CaitieCat)
Please leave links you'd like to share, to your own posts or others', in comments.
The New York Timesreports that the GAO is set to release a terribly unsurprising study of the US' for-profit colleges and universities. It turns out that a lot of them are in it for the financial aid. A lot of financial aid.
Here's the abbreviated version: For-profit colleges place recruiters under pressure to deliver consumers, er, students, or face being fired. In order to increase market share, er, enrollment, counselors help fudge financial aid forms. Or they make shit up without students' knowledge. The colleges then collect massive amounts of tuition, er, taxpayer money. Students are frequently left with debts accumulated from attending overpriced institutions of questionable rigor.
This is what happens when you treat education like a commodity.
I don't think that US society properly values education. Politicians talk about the need for everyone to get a college degree, but they don't talk about why. Education is good, I suppose, but what about content? In an economy where employers frequently demand that job candidates have a degree, any degree, there's a huge incentive to get a quick degree in whatever.
Focusing on quick degrees over content devalues the development of skills like writing, reading, and critical thinking. These things take time. The humanities are all about time. Feminism, for that matter, is all about time. Intellectual development is time consuming, and while it need not take place in a classroom, it does take resources.
And what of technical education? Insistence on college degrees devalues traditional methods of apprenticeship and worker-led training.
Community colleges can provide both liberal arts and technical education, but only if they have the money to do so. Despite speeches from the likes of President Obama, US community colleges are serving more students than ever while attempting to balance shrinking budgets.
This is what happens when you treat education like a commodity.
Needless to say, non-profit colleges are in on the action, too. Recruitment is big business. Colleges spent top dollars on housing, rec centers, and other aspects of student life. Not that there's anything wrong with this. But there is something wrong with cutting programs in the social sciences and humanities. Frequently, colleges' focus appear to be giving students what they want: quick, easy degrees in a fun environment. If these students have fond memories of fun times at the stadium, they'll make potential donors to alumni associations.
The US' elite colleges do have a one-up on some for-profit institutions: research. Patentable knowledge brings huge dollars to university-affiliated research foundations and their corporate partners. Overhead from government grants fills university coffers, paying administrative salaries and plugging huge budgetary holes caused by shrinking public funding.
Actual education? It's not so much a priority when money is the driving force.
Have I mentioned that it doesn't have to be this way? There are plenty of nations on Earth (most of them?) where education isn't treated as a commodity.
Does this sort of entitlement program lead to fraud?
No.
Do you know what entitlement fraud looks like?
"At one college in Texas, a recruiter encouraged the undercover investigator not to report $250,000 in savings, saying it was 'not the government’s business.' At a Pennsylvania college, the financial representative told an undercover applicant who had reported a $250,000 inheritance that he should have answered 'zero' when asked about money he had in savings — and then told him she would 'correct' his form by reducing the reported assets to zero, a change she later confirmed by e-mail and voicemail." NYT
This.
--- Frontline's college, inc. was an amazing documentary on this subject. I thought about working bits of the (transcribed) interviews into this post, but I can't do them justice.
[Trigger warning for fat hatred, discussion of dieting and body image, and dehumanization of fat people.]
Sometimes people ask me why I don't fund the site with content-driven advertising, and I explain that content-driven advertising is incompatible with maintaining Shakesville as a safe space. Below the fold is an example of the would-be-hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-tragic content-driven advertising that is served to my email.
[Click to embiggen.]
On left, the black silhouette of a fat woman whose body is not totally dissimilar in shape to my own. Over the silhouette, across the torso, is printed in white text: "30+ Pounds Overweight?" Next to the silhouette is text reading: "Lose 30 lbs during summer? Try [redacted] free. Thousands of Women are dropping pounds with [redacted]! Try it free! Click to lose." On the right, is the image of a thin, young, white woman, smiling. She appears after a flash animation wipes away the fat silhouette, leaving her in its place.
Now, apart from the fact that there is significantly more than a 30-pound difference between those two figures, and the fact that this is an advertisement for some weight loss product that doesn't work and/or will do damage to the bodies of its users, and the fact that the "free" has an asterisk next to it, indicating that women will end up paying money for the privilege of potentially destroying their bodies with this product (remember Fen-Phen?), let us just take a moment to appreciate the message here: Fat women are just shadows, just monstrous shapes, not even human, and they only become real people with faces and smiles and clothes and happiness if they stop being fat.
This is the ad content I get served because I talk about fat people being deserving of love and respect, from themselves and everyone else.
And I want to be clear here: while this is funny, it's also (for me) very much what it's like to have serious ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder - I don't have the H for Hyperactive bit, but wow do I have the rest). Try having a brief one-topic (LOL!) conversation with me sometime, it's like trying to get from Uxbridge to Woolwich Arsenal on the Tube in the morning rush: I'll get there, but it takes a while and I have to change trains a few times.
The actor is veteran Canadian comedian Rick Green. From my brief perusal, the site appears to be a legitimate resource centre for people with ADD (and for parents of children with it). I have no association with the site, but I'm all for resources being available to people to deal with this - though I do welcome any news about the organization if I'm mistaken, of course.
Transcript below the jump.
(A garden scene, with an older white apparently cis man actor wearing a black t-shirt with the letters AD/HD in an AC/DC - the rock band - style, and a towel wrapped around his waist in parody of the Old Spice ads; title is "Old Spice meets ADHD"
Man: Hello ladies. Look at me. Now look at your man. Now look at me. Now look at your man. Now look at that red bird.
Man indicates small plastic bird on birdbath behind him
What is that orange circle?
pan to orange paper circle hanging from tree
Now look at me and oh, look, there's another bird down there, that's what it's like to have ADHD.
pan back to second bird beside first bird
Does your man have ADHD?
man holds up two tickets
If he does, then here are those tickets he bought to that thing you love but then he forgot about them and never gave them to you because he got interested in model trains.
man holds up model train box
He didn't find them again until a year later when he took up welding.
man holds up some sort of welding apparatus
Now he's thinking 'I should go out in the back yard and seed things a little!'
man indicates wheelbarrow with bag of seed, then picks up gift box and shakes it
I have ADHD and I could never wait at Christmas to open things, I'd always want to know what things are.
pan to fez on top of push lawnmower
Oh! Did you know that the fez comes from Turkey?
man exchanges fez for canoe paddle
This year at the cottage, I want to go paddling, and I should remember to bring my guitar.
man indicates purple guitar leaning against something behind him
I don't play it very well, but I should exercise too so I can be in shape when I'm there.
at "exercise", he begins using some sort of arm exercise thingy
And how come they don't make pasta in different colours?
man is sprayed with - silly string, maybe?
And I'm behind in my tax paperwork but I've become interested.
man shuffles paperwork and throws it aside, before mounting recumbent bicycle
I'm also interested in bicycling and I spent $2000 on a recumbent bicycle, it's interesting, but uh-oh -
man is handed ice hockey stick
- the hockey season's started so I'll never go biking on it.
Fade to black, text on screen: GOT ADD?
We're okay with that.
Man offscreen: How did I get on a bicycle, did I buy this? Y'know what's a great movie? Mumford.
meanwhile, the screen text changes to the website logo for totallyadd.com.)
Tip of the CaitieCap to she who sent it to me with great and genuine fondness, my ex, J.
What is your least favorite euphemism/slur for "woman"?
There are a lot I don't like (and some I do: I have a ridiculous love for "broad," especially when another womanist/feminist woman refers to me affectionately as a broad), but the one that makes my teeth absolutely grind is the dog/fox dichotomy, i.e. an ugly/unsexy woman is a "dog" and a beautiful/sexy woman is a fox. Ugh.
I don't guess I will surprise anyone here by saying I wholly and enthusiastically support every person's right to define the unique boundaries of their relationship(s), and I do not subscribe to the notion that there is one "right way" to do romantic and/or sexual relationships. I don't even believe romantic partnerships need to be sexual to "count," nor do I believe that romantic partnerships that are sexual need to be monogamous.
But are you shitting me with this shit?
Hill says, that of course it's every woman's right to refuse to have sex when she's not in the mood or has a headache. However, expecting men to cope on their own with no outlet whatsoever is shortsighted and cruel, says Hill.
..."If you're talking about sexual needs honestly with your partner, you get better at communicating with each other, you get better with honesty," says Hill. "Everything is out in the open and you have an honest relationship according to your man's biology, not according to some outdated social norms."
Huh. Now, see, I would argue that having a relationship "according to your man's biology" (sure) is an "outdated social norm." But I'm just kooky that way.
[Trigger warning for discussions of body size, body hatred, and image manipulation.]
[Click images to embiggen.]
On the left: Singer Katy Perry holding a media conference on Aug. 2 in the rooftop pool of the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark in Singapore, where she's performing at the open-air music festival Singfest 2010. [Reuters] On the right: Katy Perry on the cover of Rolling Stone. [Image via.]
The airbrushing out of her "belly" is not merely terribly done; it's also just the most ridiculous body-hostile bullshit. I can't count the number of female friends I have seen grabbing at their waists while sitting down and lamenting, frequently with unbearably sad expressions of self-loathing, that they were "fat" because their slender stomachs pooched almost imperceptibly when they sat down, like human bodies are designed to do.
These pictures are lies. They are not images of women whose bodies are "better." They are images of women whose bodies have been Photoshopped.
The real Katy Perry is beautiful. The Rolling Stone covergirl Katy Perry is Impossibly Beautiful.
------------------------
Please note: There are quite obviously legitimate criticisms to be made about Perry's work, but that is not the subject of this post and such comments will be considered off-topic.
By way of reminder: Comments that try to suss out what changes, exactly, were made, and even comments noting that, for example, the removal of laugh lines because they are ZOMG wrinkles actually robs a face of its character or humanity, are welcome. Discussions of how "she looks handsomer/hotter/better in the candid picture" and associated commentary (which would certainly make me feel like shit if I were the person being discussed) are not. So please comment in keeping with the series' intent, implicit in which is the question: If no one can ever be beautiful enough, then to what end is the pursuit of an elusive perfection?
John McCain is a courageous maverick with an unwavering commitment to concrete principles. And he'll tell you how he feels about repealing the 14th amendment as soon as he knows which way the wind is blowing:
In the final moments of a morning press conference about the stimulus, cohosted by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), McCain asked for one final question from reporters...which happened to be about the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship. McCain abruptly ended the press conference.
"We're talking about the stimulus right now," McCain said, before darting off to the elevators down the hall from the Senate studio, where he again declined to take a question. Reporters eventually caught up with McCain in the basement of the Capitol, where he was walking toward to the man-operated train connecting the Senate with the Russell office building.
TPMDC asked, "Do you support the Minority Leader's push for hearings into the repeal of birthright citizenship?"
"Sure, why not?" McCain said briefly.
"Do you support the idea itself?"
"I support the idea of having hearings," McCain said.
"Do you have a problem with the 14th amendment?" another reporter asked.
"You're changing the constitution of the United States," McCain said. "I support the concept of holding hearings."
"I support the concept of holding hearings," McCain repeated, turning to the rail car conductor.
"Let's go!" he snapped.
"I don't have anything to add to that."
That heady mix of bravery, patriotism, steadfast principles, and Old Spice you smell...? It's John McCain. Get a whiff of that, bitchez.
Hey Shakers! Just a heads up -- tonight on my Madwoman at Play Ustream program (5 pm Pacific), I'll be talking with Melissa about our respective wacky newspaper features (mine, the Port Townsend Leader Police Blotter, and hers, the Gary Post-Tribune "Quicklys") -- plus fun-facts about Melissa and pigeons with poop-nests.
You can watch the show live tonight at 5 pm, or see the recorded version until Friday at www.madwomanatplay.com (I'll be posting a transcript of the show here sometime tomorrow afternoon).
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
John McCain is a courageous maverick with an unwavering commitment to concrete principles. And he'll tell you how he feels about repealing the 14th amendment as soon as he knows 
