Tomorrow, the Center for Reproductive Rights is taking the FDA to court "for ignoring a March 2009 court order to end age restrictions on emergency contraception."
At the start of his administration, President Obama declared that politics would no longer play a role in U.S. science policy, stating, "we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." And soon after FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg was confirmed, she told reporters that it was her mantra to make FDA's decisions more "science-based."
So in March 2009, when the court ruled that the FDA acted in "bad faith and in response to political pressure" when it repeatedly and unreasonably delayed making a decision on Plan B and departed in significant ways from its normal procedures, it thought the new administration would "conduct a fair assessment of the scientific evidence." This has obviously not happened, and the Center is returning to the courts to make sure the FDA complies with medical and scientific consensus that says there is no rationale for age restrictions to emergency contraception.
The age of consent is 17 or younger in all but 8 states. Only in the fucked-up paradigm where young women are considered mature enough to have sex but not mature, intelligent, or autonomous enough to make their own decisions about both sex and its potential consequences, and only in a fucked-up rape culture where we diligently ignore anything resembling sense, can some tortured argument be conceived to deny emergency contraception to young women.
It is imperative that this restriction be ended. Voice your support of the Center for Reproductive Rights here.
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.]
"I fully support the NOH8 campaign and all it stands for and am proud to be a part of it. But I stand by my husband's stance on DADT." — Cindy McCain, tweeting support for DADT the same day she appeared in a video denouncing it.
The Ministry of Health reported that as of Friday, there had been 917 deaths and more than 14,600 were hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms. That is up from the 724 deaths and 11,125 hospitalizations reported a few days before.
The disease has been found in 6 of Haiti's 10 provinces, known as departments, and is most severe where it originated, in Artibonite, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the deaths.
Several epidemiologists have said the disease has not peaked and will likely worsen and break out in other regions of the country, with United Nations health officials estimating about 270,000 may be sickened in the coming years.
One of my favorite charities, Water.org, has been working in Haiti since before the earthquake to give access to clean water to Haitians. If you want to and are able to help, please donate to Water.org here.
[Trigger warning for misogyny and sexual violence. This came up in an unrelated thread this weekend, so I thought I'd open a post about it for discussion.]
So, Stephen Fry gave an interview. And in the interview, the openly gay writer and actor (whose sexuality I'm noting only so that readers know when he talks about how straight men feel, he is not merely treating personal experience as universal, which would be bad enough) was quoted as saying some pretty nasty things about women and female sexuality:
[Fry] said he believed most straight men felt that "they disgust women" as they "find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are".
"For good reason," he declares in a candid interview in the November issue of Attitude magazine. "If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas. Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: 'God, I've got to get my fucking rocks off', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush. It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it."
Fry, 53, continues: "I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want," he said. "Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, 'Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!' But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?"
Fry then took to his Twitter account to denounce the interview, and to accuseThe Observer, who quoted the article, "of portraying him as 'the antichrist' after it reported that he said women do not really like sex."
"So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up," he tweeted.
He then wrote about the incident on his blog (via), and said, in part: "For reasons that should be obvious now if they weren’t before, I don’t give print interviews. I never consent to them any more than you, dear reader, would voluntarily consent to being mugged, raped or burgled, but when under pressure I will compromise by agreeing to do a profile for some small magazine or other."
Yes, being misquoted is exactly like being raped. (No, it's not.)
And, oh yes, about that "misquote." Attitude stands by its reporter. As well they should do, considering that Fry has made exactly the same comments before:
Text Onscreen: Men & Women. Stephen Fry then speaks, sometimes onscreen, intercut with images of women and men running in marathons and other pointless images (emphasis original): Women, for some reason, like to claim that they're as excited about the idea of sex as men are, but it's manifest nonsense. I mean, when do women hang around in parks, looking for casual encounters with men? They just don't. Well, the only ones that do are prostitutes, who do it for money, which proves the very point. [laughs] They have to be paid to do it. Whereas, when it's just men, they don't want to have a relationship; they just want to have sex. Now, if women were like that, we all know, men would say, "Oh, thank you!" And for some bizarre reason, women don't want you to believe this. "Oh, that's not true at all! I saw a waiter the other day with quite nice buttocks—made me quite juicy just thinking it!" And a man would say, "The other day?! What about every fucking minute of every hour of every day?! You just don't get it! You don't get it; you don't get it, what it's like to have one of these in your bloody trousers. You have no idea what it's like!" And women don't. Lucky for them!"
So, what we have here is a gentleman who claims to have been misquoted saying misogynist things he's said on camera previously, and then saying it's like being raped.
Calling me an "angry leftist" is pretty pathetic as insults go. Yes, I'm a leftist. Yes, I'm angry. I don't feel like either of those things is something for which I ought to be ashamed.
I recognize that there are groups of people among whom calling me an "angry leftist" discredits me. But I don't really give a fuck what those people think of me. So.
Better insults, please.
(Fair warning: Any insult containing "fat" or "cunt" is an automatic disqualification in the category of "better.")
The below clip aired on CNN this morning. Honestly, I don't think the TSA and the US security state could've gotten any better if they wrote the segment themselves. Discussing a viral video of a male passenger warning a male security agent about to give him an enhanced pat-down, "if you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested," the two anchors yuk it up about what a goofball the passenger is, noting that he was not allowed onto the flight and is "now facing a $10,000 fine and a possible civil suit," for asserting his desire and right to not be sexually assaulted. That's followed by a whaddaya-expect sort of exchange about how compliance is required and how that requirement is justified because "you've got to remember the Underwear Bomber."
Not a single hint of questioning the efficacy of the security measures. Not a passing thought of debating whether invasive screening is safe, appropriate, justifiable, or even good business. Just an argument for submission, disguised as a friendly conversation. On a national news program.
[Transcript below.]
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Things are getting very tense at airline security checkpoints across the country, and that would be an understatement. [laughs]
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: [laughs] Boy, are they ever.
COSTELLO: Yeah, get this: A confrontation between a California man and TSA officials in San Diego has gone viral this morning. [laughing] Thirty-one-year- old software engineer John Tyner was going on a hunting trip with his father-in-law on Saturday. He refused that full-body scan, and then he turned his cell phone video camera on, recording this exchange with security agents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TSA: Come on over here.
PASSENGER: All right.
TSA: Do you have anything in your pockets?
PASSENGER: I don't think so. They had me take it all out.
TSA: No belt, no nothing?
PASSENGER: No, no belt, no nothing.
TSA: Do you have any external or internal implants that I need to be aware of?
PASSENGER: No.
TSA: We are going to be doing a standard pat down on you today, using my hands and going like this on your body.
PASSENGER: All right.
TSA: Also, we're going to be doing a groin check. That means I'm going to place my hand on your hip, my other hand on your inner thigh, slowly go up, and slide down.
PASSENGER: Okay.
TSA: We are going to do that two times in the front and two times in the back.
PASSENGER: All right.
TSA: And if you'd like a private screening, we can make that available for you also.
PASSENGER: We can do that out here, but if you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested.
TSA: Actually… [long pause] We are going to have a supervisor here because of your statement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Oof! Oof! Tyner, of course, never made it to that hunting trip. TSA agents didn't really like his response. Supervisors were called in, and he's now facing a $10,000 fine and a possible civil suit. I understand his pain, but you've got to remember the Underwear Bomber. And he refused to go through the big x-ray check [laughing] that shows you kind of naked.
ROBERTS: Yeah, he didn't want to go through the body scanner. So opted for the security check then didn't like that. So… There's a lot of controversy going on with these things.
COSTELLO: And once you go through security, you can't get a halfway security check.
ROBERTS: Yeah, you can't say, thanks, I'm going to leave without them threatening you, right?
COSTELLO: Yes. Without them threatening you— You're not getting on that plane. Unless they do the whole security check, you're not getting on. So he couldn't go halfway through. So he was out of there.
Sure enough, that will be the former president sharing screen-time with the fun-loving guys in The Hangover 2, now filming in Thailand, a Clinton source confirms to PEOPLE.
Clinton, who'll play himself in the comedy, shot his brief appearance on Saturday in Bangkok, where part of the production takes place. He was in the capital city to deliver a speech on clean energy.
Fans of the first Hangover will remember Mike Tyson's memorable performance in that movie last year, while this sequel recently made news for the coming and going of Mel Gibson, whose cameo role will now be filled by Liam Neeson.
Apart from the fact that the Hangover franchise is deeply misogynistic and thinks rape jokes are hilarious, the first film was also racist, homophobic, fat-hating, and classist. (Maude knows it was probably objectionable in other ways, too, but I've not seen the whole thing.) That the former president believes this is a project with which he wants to be affiliated is enormously disappointing (if not terribly surprising).
And given the location of the sequel, the tone of the first film, and Todd Phillips' general oeuvre, there are almost certainly going to be jokes about the sex trade and sex workers from marginalized populations.
You know, a primary concern of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Something tells me that someone didn't quite think this through. Then again, Bill ain't exactly known for not impulsively doing stupid things to amuse himself without much thought for how it might affect his wife.
Still whinging that his Big Important Rally was misunderstood, Jon Stewart took a seat beside Rachel Maddow and, in the first segment of their interview (the remaining pieces of which, as well as the raw, unedited interview in its entirety, can be found here), explained what the rally was REALLY all about to us stupidfuck critics who are too daft to get hip to his jive:
These are the relevant bits that I want to address:
The intention [of the rally] is to say that we've all bought into [the idea that] the conflict in this country is left and right, liberal and conservative, red and blue. All the news networks have bought into that. CNN sort of started it. They have this idea that, you know, the fight in Washington is Republicans and Democrats, so, why don't we isolate that and we'll stand back here, and…Democrats and Republicans will go at it. Red and blue staters will go at it. And what it does is amplify a division that I actually don't think is the right fight.
…Both sides have their way of shutting down debate. …You've said Bush is a war criminal. Now, that may be technical true. In my world, war criminal is Pol Pot or the Nuremburg trials. …I think that's such an incendiary charge that when you put it in the conversation as—well, technically he is. That may be right. But it feels like a conversation stopper, not a conversation starter. …We were talking about tone, not content necessarily.
…My problem is it's become tribal. And if you have 24-hour networks that focus—their job is to highlight the conflict between the two sides—where I don't think that's the main conflict in our society. That was the point of the reality, was to deflate that idea that that's a real conflict—red/blue, Democrat/ Republican. I feel like there's a bigger difference between people with kids and people who don't have kids than red state/blue state.
Wow. I mean, it must be nice to be so privileged that you can argue, with a straight fucking face, that progressive-conservative isn't "the right fight," that it's just a made-up conflict started by CNN (!) and wildly blown out of proportion for ratings or fun or whatever.
It must be nice to be so privileged that the most vast difference you see among people hinges on whether they're parents.
Holy. Shit.
I mean, yes, this rally was, from the get-go, evidence that Jon Stewart is a privileged wanker with his head firmly stuck up his ass, but HOLY SHIT. "In my world, Pol Pot is a war criminal, not George Bush." Okay, but YOUR world isn't THE world.
In THE world, the one in which Jon Stewart and the Great Parental Chasm aren't the center of the universe, the "technical" truth of George Bush being a war criminal and Stewart's distaste for the "tone" of shouting that fact in public doesn't fucking matter to the millions of displaced people, the countless dead, the survivors of the dead, the wounded, the tortured, the indefinitely detained, people whose lives were ended or will never be the same all because George W. Bush started two wars of choice on lies with no strategic longterm plans for success, for rebuilding, for caring for our soldiers when they came home, and then threw out the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law, which doesn't even begin to examine what his folly has cost USians in treasure, in safety, and in support from their government as social services will be decimated to pay for his mess.
The biggest distinction between Pol Pot and George Bush is that the latter did his damage while wearing white gloves.
It's not the content, it's the tone. Right, Jon?
And I don't know how many different ways I can say that imagining there is no legitimate progressive-conservative grievance in this country is bullshit. Look, I get that Stewart is pissed that corporate rule is irrevocably corrupting our system, and that the media plays a big part in that, and that people on the left and the right need to find some way to work together to stop the fire sale of the entire nation to corporate vampires who haven't a shred of patriotism or any interest in protecting the long-term security of the US economy, because they'll just move onto China once we've been bled dry.
But suggesting that it's exclusively a false conflict trumped up by the media which divides left and right, and that there are no genuine barriers, beyond ideology and media narratives, stopping some grand cohesion of progressives and conservatives, is unmitigated horseshit.
I guess it probably does just feel like a game to someone whose humanity, basic rights, bodily autonomy, and dignity aren't at fucking stake. But Stewart needs to get it through his goddamn impenetrably thick exoskeleton of privilege that IT ISN'T A GAME TO MARGINALIZED PEOPLE.
In HIS world, where there are "real" war criminals and "technical" war criminals, elite conservatism is populated by people who are only anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-affirmative action for political reasons, but personally want access to abortion, don't give a fuck about gay marriage, and hire people of color without having to be required.
But in THE world, James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, and Dr. George Tiller are dead.
"My problem is it's become tribal." Yeah? Well, fuck you, Stewart. And fuck your smug contempt for the hoi polloi and its primitive tribalism. (I'm not even going to get into the implicit racism in that bullshit. Suffice it to say: Congratulations for being as enlightened as a 17th century ethnographer.) Not all tribes are formed in pursuit of conflict. Some tribes are formed as refuge from attack.
A reality which, I acknowledge, is decidedly inconvenient in its fundamental subversion of the "imaginary conflict" narrative.
I am deeply, deeply sympathetic to the idea that the media distorts and exacerbates conflict, but not the idea that the media creates it. The ideological divide is meaningful beyond having different ideas about how things should be done; it is also, because of ancient bigotry, about who we are as people. Pretending otherwise doesn't help in any way at all the people targeted for who we are. Especially when that dangerous pretense is accompanied by insufferable concern trolling about our "tone."
Stewart says, in order to justify his rally and the philosophy he's embraced which underlined it, and without seemingly any worry that he might be wrong, "I actually don't think [left-right division] is the right fight."
"Right fight" implies a choice. "Right fight" implies that marginalized people could spend their time discussing Very Serious Things, but instead they're fighting the Culture Wars with hysterical tones.
It's not about the "right fight." I don't know any feminist/womanist who wouldn't give anything to never have to worry about rollbacks of Roe ever again. I don't know any LGBTQI activist who wouldn't give anything to never have to spend another moment advocating for rights LGBTQI people don't have ever again. I don't know any anti-racist activist who wouldn't give anything to never have to be concerned with a person of color being denied access or opportunity ever again. I don't know any advocate for people with physical disabilities, people with neurological disabilities, undocumented immigrants, the poor, the uninsured, the unemployed, fat people, non-Christians, abuse survivors, veterans, and/or other marginalized people who wouldn't give anything to never have to fight for equality denied or be obliged to teaspoon oceans of bigotry ever again.
It's not about the "right fight." It's about the necessary fight. It's about the fights we can't avoid, no matter how much we want them to not exist at all.
And, yeah, there was a time when this fight didn't exist, not in the way it does now. And part of that is attributable to cable news. But mostly it's because marginalized people started asserting their rights. We don't want to live in a country where black and white folks are at separate water fountains, gays are in closets, people with disabilities are tucked away in institutions, and women are dying in back alleys anymore. We don't want to live in a country with internment camps and reservations and housing projects, of separate but equal and 75 cents on the dollar and Don't Ask Don't Tell anymore. We don't want to be marginalized for the sake of maintaining civil peace for the privileged anymore.
And if there's a fight about that, it's because the people holding the power to grant our equality are treating we the people as an exclusive country club and liberty and justice for all as a suggestion.
The media didn't create this fight. The media is only responsible for treating both sides as equal, for pretending two women getting married to each other is "shoving their sexuality in people's faces" but the Quiverfull movement isn't, for pretending that "choice" and "my way" are equally valid arguments, for pretending that "because God says so" is a legitimate political position.
And that's the same damn rap that Stewart's running, by pretending the fight isn't real.
It's real. And its genesis is a nation that promises its people equality, then endeavors to deny it to them.
Stewart is right that it's not strictly about left vs. right; it's more about marginalized vs. privileged (which is a lot more left vs. right than it's not). The irony, of course, is that it's his unexamined privilege which renders him unable to see that he's getting it wrong, to understand that his "solution" is just another part of the problem.
Urging moderation, suggesting there can be compromise with oppressors, is just a big silencing tactic, the same one that's been used to discredit marginalized people angling for what their nation promised them, since the nation's inception. History tells us that the only compromise acceptable to privileged oppressors is our surrender. We fight loud and hard because that's all there can be.
We don't need another concern troll, Jon Stewart. We need allies.
And if you're not going to lead or follow, then get the hell out of the way.
"Well, my take on Charlie Sheen is that, if that was a woman, she would have been fired; her ass would've been fired a long time ago. So, you know, only in television can a male who's done all that stuff still have a job, because how many average men or women could behave that way and keep their job? And in this economy, it's kind of infuriating—because I think the guy makes a million dollars an episode or something like that, and I think about all the people that go to work every day, and, if they make one misstep, they're fired, and then we see them at the job fair, and this guy's just livin' large."—Kathy Griffin, on Charlie Sheen, privilege, sexism, classism, and double standards. [Video here.]
Video Description: Clips of all four furry residents of Shakes Manor being super cute and cuddly, set to Ronan Keating's version of "When You Say Nothing at All." Highlights include Sophie leaping up onto a chair to greet me as I walk into the office (0:15), which she does all the time and is sooooooo cute, and Dudz sticking his nose into the crevice of my arm (2:30), which he loves to do, as well as give me a muzzle-nuzzle in the hollow where my shoulder meets my neck.
As always, still pix of all below the fold (on most browsers)...
This was an expected decision, but still frustrating:
The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Friday to pause enforcement of the military's ban on openly gay and lesbian service members while that policy faces a legal challenge.
The high court sided against the Log Cabin Republicans, a GOP gay rights group, that had asked that discharges of gay and lesbian members of the armed forces under the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy be suspended.
The Obama administration had argued that the ban should be allowed to stay in place while litigation continues.
FIERCE ADVOCATE!!! Now to the right of (gay) Republicans on a basic civil rights issue.
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