[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
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!
Daily Dose of Cute
I took that picture of Dudley the other day while he was watching Iain. He watches us intently when we move, which is, of course, because he's a dog—and dogs specialize in watching humans to learn our gestures in a way no other species does. I know this fact, but it is still beautiful to observe in practice, this intense looking he does to bond with us.
When one of us moves around the room, he watches—but only if we move in a particular way, as he's learned the difference between getting up to, say, go to the bathroom and getting up with Purposeful Intent to Do Something Important—and watches steadily, trying to discern if there is anything we need or expect or are about to give him. If not, he lies back down, with a great heaving sigh of contentment.
He is such a good dog, such an excellent companion. I cannot believe that once upon a time, he was owned by someone who didn't love him.
End Greyhound Racing.
Obviously
Obviously James Franco "likes to relax with a nice shave and a song before he hosts any award shows," and obviously he would post this video of himself getting a shave while singing along to "Cruisin' For Love" by '70s British country rockers The Kursaal Flyers. Did you think he liked relaxing some other way? This man is about to host the Academy Awards, and he obviously needs to relax with a nice shave and a song. No Doy.
[Via Andy.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proudly not neutral.
Recommended Reading:
Problem Chylde: Talking about a Revolution...
Kai: Youth, Joblessness and Revolution in Egypt—and America?
Shark-Fu: Witness
Sady: #DearJohn: A Few Notes on Choosing Your Battles Poorly [TW for discussions of rape]
Peter: This Girl Is Your Sister [TW for rape, violence]
Rose: Carol Ann and Laura Stutte Sue Alleged Arsonist [TW for homophobia, violence]
Echidne: Images vs. Words
Leave your links in comments...
Backlash Backfire
In August of 2007, the state of Iowa's prohibition on same-sex marriage was ruled unconstitutional. In 2008, the case for marriage equality went to the Iowa Supreme Court, and, in 2009, the Court unanimously ruled in favor of marriage equality, thus making same-sex marriage legal in Iowa.
So of course Republicans in the state House introduced an amendment to the state's constitution to outlaw it again—a futile gesture, since state Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal flatly refuses to allow it to come up for a vote in the Senate. (Rock on.) But there were hearings nonetheless, because homobigots love to hear themselves talk in poorly appointed rooms on shitty microphones.
What they weren't counting on was providing a platform to 19-year-old Iowan Zach Wahls, who was raised by a same-sex couple and whose compelling testimony has gone viral, making a passionate appeal for marriage equality the most talked-about event of their stupid symbolic hearing. Whooooooops!
Take it away, Zach.
[Transcript below. H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]
Good evening, Mr. Chairman. My name is Zach Wahls. I'm a sixth-generation Iowan, an engineering student at the University of Iowa, and I was raised by two women.
My biological mom, Terri, told her grandparents that she was pregnant, that the artificial insemination had worked, and they wouldn't even acknowledge it. It wasn't until I was born and they succumbed to my infantile cuteness that they broke down and told her that they were thrilled to have another grandson. Unfortunately, neither of them lived to see her married to her partner, Jackie, of 15 years, when they wed in 2009.
My younger sister and only sibling was born in 1994; we actually have the same anonymous donor, so we're full siblings, which is really cool for me. Um, you know, and I guess the point is that our family really isn't so different from any other Iowa family—you know, when I'm home, we go to church together, we eat dinner, we go on vacations. But, you know, we have our hard times, too—we get in fights, um, you know, actually, my mom Terri was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000; it is a devastating disease that put her in a wheelchair, so we've had our share of struggles.
But, you know, we're Iowans; we don't expect anyone to solve our problems for us; we'll fight our own battles; we just hope for equal and fair treatment from our government.
Being a student at the University of Iowa, the topic of same-sex marriage comes up quite frequently in classroom discussions. You know, and the question always comes down to, "Well, can gays even raise kids?" And the question, you know, the conversation gets quiet for a moment, because most people don't really have an answer—and then I raise my hand and say, "Actually, I was raised by a gay couple, and I'm doing pretty well."
I scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT; I'm actually an Eagle Scout; I own and operate my own small business. If I were your son, Mr. Chairman, I believe I'd make you very proud.
I'm not really so different from any of your children. My family really isn't so different from yours. After all, your family doesn't derive its sense of worth from being told by the state, "You're married—congratulations!" No, the sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other, to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones; it comes from the love that binds us. That's what makes a family.
So what you're voting here isn't to change us. It's not to change our families; it's to change how the law views us, how the law treats us. You are voting for the first time, in the history of our state, to codify discrimination into our constitution—a constitution that, but for the proposed amendment, is the least amended constitution in the United States of America. You are telling Iowans that some among you are second-class citizens who do not have the right to marry the person you love.
So will this vote affect my family? Will it affect yours? Over the next two hours, I'm sure we're going to hear plenty of testimony about how damaging having gay parents is on kids. But in my 19 years, not once have I ever been confronted by an individual who realized independently that I was raised by a gay couple.
And you know why? Because the sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.
Thank you very much. [applause]
WHAM!
That sound was the sledgehammer:
This morning, the anti-choice leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives decided to modify a provision in the "Stupak on Steroids" agenda that would redefine what constitutes rape.There really are no words that would accurately describe how utterly heinous, how unspeakably vile that is. Truly a horror show in the House of Representatives.
At the same time, these anti-choice politicians opened a new attack on women's health. They added a new provision to H.R. 358, which was introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania. The new H.R. 358 would allow hospitals to refuse to provide abortion care even when it's necessary to save a woman's life!
My Point, Here It Is
[Trigger warning for sexual violence, rape apologia, and threats. The background and timeline of the Penny Arcade Dickwolves Debacle, which I will be discussing in this post, is here.]
Since yesterday, when Mike/Gabe declared "Okay That's Enough," once he found himself on the receiving end of the same sorts of threats and violent rhetoric I've been getting from his readers for the past six months—from exhortions to kill myself to threatening emails and comments to a coordinated campaign against me and the blog (to which I won't link, but it's easy enough to find if you're so inclined) which explicitly encourages Penny Arcade readers to stalk and rape me—the amount of email I've been getting has actually increased.
That's not a coincidence.
It is also not a coincidence that many of the people who came into this space to shout at me and stupidly accuse me of censorship and harass/threaten me reacted to having their commenting privileges revoked by sockpuppeting to do an end-run around our security in order to keep commenting and/or treated being banned as an invitation to take up the issue with me personally via email.
When I ask a person not to engage in rape apologia in this space, because it is my space and I have not only not consented to host rape apologia here, but have also explicitly and repeatedly deemed it off-limits, and that person continues to engage in rape apologia nonetheless, without regard for my boundaries or personal autonomy, that's not exactly someone who's demonstrating a commitment to the notions of consent, autonomy, and respect.
That's someone who's leveraging the values of a rape culture to violate my boundaries.
That's someone who's acting like a fucking rapist.
That is what is meant when people talk about a rape culture—not, as it is continually misrepresented, a culture in which one can trace a direct line from every rape joke to an actual act of rape, but a culture in which there is endemic hostility to the notions of consent, autonomy, and respect of individual boundaries, privacy, and dignity.
That endemic hostility is absolutely and demonstrably associated with high rates of sexual violence, and it is also inextricably linked with low rates of conviction for crimes of sexual violence, i.e. institutional support for contempt and/or indifference toward consent. Lower conviction rates means more rapists left free to rape, which underscores the importance of challenging apathy toward consent. And every time someone decides to say "Fuck her/him, I don't have to respect her/his clearly delineated boundaries," and it goes unchallenged, that more deeply entrenches the rape culture and its values.
This shit doesn't happen in a void, and contempt for consent breeds more contempt for consent by normalizing it, by making it a thing so ubiquitous that we begin to believe that's just the way things are.
Rape is inevitable. Subway gropers are inevitable. Stalkers are inevitable. Trolls are inevitable.
We believe those things because we don't accept that they are all part of a continuum which starts with a failure to prioritize respect for consent.
And because we continually reinforce that lack of respect for consent with entertainment—films, television shows, music, books, magazines, comics, video games, sports, advertising—that tells people who don't respect consent that it's okay to hold that belief. Some of those people will be rapists. Some of them will just be people who viciously harass ladies who happen to disagree with their male heroes. Some of them will be self-proclaimed Nice Guys who would never do anything like that, because they don't see their own slightly-too-aggressive, slightly-too-insistent, slightly-too-entitled behavior as part of the same continuum, because it's so easy to react to the evidence of one's participation in the rape culture with knee-jerk revulsion.
It's easier to call me a psycho and accuse me of calling them rapists, than it is to self-reflect on how pernicious the rape culture really is and how maddeningly easy it is to perpetuate it, even if you're not sticking part of your body (or whatever) into someone else's body against hir will.
I have done it. I have perpetuated the rape culture. We have all done it. We were born into it, and we were all socialized to have contempt for consent.
The only issue is what we choose to do about that reality.
By all rights, this entire Penny Arcade debacle should be eye-opening for anyone with a baseline capacity for logic. Of course it was always going to go down this way. Of course treating rape a little too flippantly was going to trigger survivors, and of course triggered survivors and their allies who asked for some consideration were going to get attacked, and of course when Mike and Jerry escalated it by mocking anti-rape advocates, those advocates were going be harassed and threatened in an attempt to silence them, and so on and so on until here we are.
It was entirely predictable—and not because, as the jaded cynics of internet battles would have us believe, that's the way the internet works, but because that's the way the rape culture works.
The rape culture is not just about actual and attempted acts of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, but also about all the other ways in which contempt and/or indifference toward other human beings' consent, autonomy, boundaries, and right to halt any unwanted interaction in their personal spaces are violated.
It's about the all the narratives, attitudes, and behaviors that surround the violation of another person's boundaries and sense of personal safety.
It's about the ways in people are targeted with threats (often including threats of rape) in order to intimidate them into silence, especially around discussions of the rape culture.
The act of rape itself is not just about sexual violence; it is also about hostility toward another human being's consent, autonomy, and boundaries—and you don't have to actually be physically violating another person to show hostility toward hir consent, autonomy, and boundaries. And that is the point of the rape culture.
And that is why people like me object to comics (etc.) that, intentionally or not, provide tacit or explicit approval of hostility for consent, even if it's just by treating rape a little too casually, using it a little too flippantly to make a point—because it always turns out this way.
That's not a coincidence. That's the whole goddamn point.
I could never have made as effective an argument for what was wrong with that Penny Arcade comic as the resulting fallout itself has made.
Imagine that—a bunch of dipshits who find a comic about rape funny have no respect for boundaries or consent.
Many people will feel obliged to make the point that there are lots of people who read the comic and didn't act that way. Indeed so. But what they did do is participate in the tacit approval of the rape culture, which empowers the people who are inclined to troll and make threats and engage in general menace.
It's not good enough to say, "Lots of people can laugh at that without hurting anybody," not when laughing along conveys approval of the rape culture, whose vales are embraced by the people who do hurt other people. They aren't formed and they don't exist in a void—and the only responsible position, if you're not inclined to be their ally, is to have a zero tolerance policy on rape as entertainment.
Otherwise, you're just creating opportunities for Bad Guys to have their fucked-up values reaffirmed and for Nice Guys to communicate silent approval.
There is no neutral in the rape culture.
------------------------
Recommended Reading: On Dickwolves, Ethics, and Why I'm Not Attending PAX East.
Previously: Rape Is Hilarious, Survivors Are So Sensitive, Quote of the Day, Troll Math and Teaspoons, T-Shirts and Teaspoons and Mythical Creatures, Taking a Brave Stance Against Survivors of Rape, Offended Is the Worst Thing to Be, and An Observation.
Open Thread: Revolution in Egypt
An Egyptian woman reacts to the situation in her homeland during a demonstration against Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak outside the Egyptian embassy in Amman February 4, 2011. [Reuters Pictures]Recommended Reading:
BBC—'Day of departure' rally in Egypt: "Tens of thousands of Egyptians are taking part in a 'day of departure' to try to oust President Hosni Mubarak. ... Our correspondent says the mood is relaxed but it is not quite the carnival atmosphere that existed before Wednesday—when pro-Mubarak gangs attacked anti-government protesters—and people are watchful."
Christiane Amanpour—Mubarak: 'If I Resign Today There Will Be Chaos' [please note if you're at work that a video starts playing when you click this link; it can be muted]: "I've just left the presidential palace in Cairo where I sat down for an exclusive 30-minute interview with President Hosni Mubarak. He told me that he is troubled by the violence we have seen in Tahrir Square over the last few days but that his government is not responsible for it."
New York Times—White House and Egypt Discuss Plan for Mubarak's Exit: "The Obama administration is discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately and turn over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military, administration officials and Arab diplomats said Thursday."
Nicholas Kristof—We Are All Egyptians:
At Tahrir Square's field hospital (a mosque in normal times), 150 doctors have volunteered their services, despite the risk to themselves. Maged, a 64-year-old doctor who relies upon a cane to walk, told me that he hadn't been previously involved in the protests, but that when he heard about the government's assault on peaceful pro-democracy protesters, something snapped.CNN—News coverage curbed as journalists are targeted in Cairo: "Journalists attempting to cover unprecedented unrest in Egypt reported being beaten, arrested and harassed by security forces and police for a second day Thursday, leading to sharply limited television coverage of the protests. Various news outlets—including the BBC, Al-Arabiya, ABC News, the Washington Post, Fox News, Al Jazeera and CNN—said members of their staffs had been attacked or otherwise targeted. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also reported that staffers were detained."
So early Thursday morning, he prepared a will and then drove 125 miles to Tahrir Square to volunteer to treat the injured. "I don't care if I don't go back," he told me. "I decided I had to be part of this."
"If I die," he added, "this is for my country."
In the center of Tahrir Square, also known as Liberation Square, I bumped into one of my heroes, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, a leading Arab feminist who for decades has fought female genital mutilation. Dr. Saadawi, who turns 80 this year, is white-haired and frail and full of fiery passion.
"I feel I am born again," she said.
Al Jazeera's daily liveblog is here.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite album released in the 1990s?
(Yes, re-releases and best-of collections totally count.)
Do Tell
A U.S. News & World Report article headlined "Obama Is Emphasizing Ronald Reagan-like Optimism" (LULZ), contains the following unintentionally hilarious passage:
As the nation prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, the question arises: Why has Ronald Reagan retained a hold on the popular imagination? Polls of historians often rate him in the top tier of presidents, and everyday Americans tend to agree.Ya think?
Of course, Reagan did have some failures.
Daily Dose of Cute
Matilda
Olivia
Sophie
Dudley
Four captured moments of classic inimitability: Matilda, curious and cute; Olivia, graceful and distracted; Sophie, in another pose befitting the platonic ideal of catdom, her tail wrapped around the tops of her paws; Dudley, standing in the door of the kitchen, patiently waiting for a treat. Each picture, just so.
Quote of the Day
"When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, I ask him to give me the strength to do right by our country and our people. And when I go to bed at night, I wait on the Lord and I ask him to forgive me my sins and to look after my family and to make me an instrument of the Lord."—President Barack Obama, at today's National Prayer Breakfast.
Listen, I hate the National Prayer Breakfast, and I hate that our political leaders participate in it, not just because I'm an atheist who isn't a fan of public (meaning government-sanctioned) celebrations of faith, but also because it confers legitimacy on its organizer, The Family, whose agenda is objectionable even to most Christians.
But the reason I'm posting this quote isn't to have that discussion. The reason I'm posting this quote is because I really just want to say: That is one heck of a Jesus-y quote, right there, I mean, that is a man who loves him some Jesus, yo, no kidding, that Barry is a fan of The Jesus like whoa, AND THERE ARE STILL RIGHTWINGERS WHO THINK HE'S A MUSLIM LULZ!!!!!!!eleventy!!!1!
I'll Show YOU, Smarty Pants
Okay, so, apparently Bill O'Reilly is fond of saying "Tide goes in, tide goes out," to prove the existence of God. Or something. I mean, I learned in grade school that the tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon (and the sun), but what the fuck do I know. After all, back then, I thought Spiderman was real. Oh wait, I do know this, Bill O'Reilly can't be arsed to google anything. I also know Bill O'Reilly thinks I'm a pinhead.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this debunking of science by O'Reilly. I know I'm convinced. Flag on the moon... how did it get there?
Poor Mars. All lonely out there.
Text Onscreen: "BILLOREILLY.COM Backstage Conversation."
(Transcript below the fold, thanks to Liss for the transcript. H/T to Shaker MMC.)
O'Reilly [sitting in his office, reading an email/letter, the text of which appears onscreen]: David, Beverley Hills, Florida—"What do you mean when you refer to the tides when you are asked about the existence of god? Science explains the tides…the moon's gravity pulls on the oceans." Okay, how'd the moon get there? [cut back to O'Reilly in office, looking directly at camera] How'd the moon get there? Look, you pinheads who attack me for this, you guys are just desperate. How'd the moon get there? How'd the sun get there? How'd it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that, and Mars doesn't have it? Venus doesn't have it—how come? Why not? How'd it get here? How did that little amoeba get here, crawl out there? [waggles fingers to mime an amoeba crawling out of the primordial ooze, I guess] How'd it do it? Come on.
You have order in this universe; you have an order in the universe. Tide comes in; tide goes out. Okay, yeah, the moon does it. Fine. How'd the moon get there? Who put it there? Did it just happen? Okay, if we have existence, if we have life on Earth, how come they don't have it on the other planets? Were we just lucky? Some meteor do this? [waves hand like exploding meteor] BOOM. Come on.
You know, I see this stuff—it's desperate. As I've said many times, it takes more faith to not believe and to think that this was all luck, all this human body, the intricacies of it and everything else—all luck!—then it does to believe in a deity. There you go.
Text Onscreen: "Become a BILLOREILLY.COM PREMIUM MEMBER for more weekly insights from Bill!"
Yeah....no.
Apparently in Shelby County, TN, teen pregnancy is "a problem". One minister, Ralph White of the Bloomfield Full Gospel Baptist Church, thinks that abstinence isn't the only message young people should get--they should hear about "responsible sexual behavior" and that more programs in churches need to address pregnancy prevention. Well, ok. That sounds all right on the face of it, doesn't it?
However, Pastor White has come up with a, let's call it, not-so-all-right solution:
MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - A Memphis pastor is taking a stand, refusing to baptize a baby unless the child's parents are married.Soooo...shame is the method here, eh? "You aren't married, so you cannot have your baby baptized in church!" Because shame works so well, amirite?! Just when did "not being married" = "man doesn't care for his partner and child"? Will Pastor White make an exception for rape survivors who may not know her attacker, become pregnant, decide to continue a pregnancy, and keep the child? Single parents are just SOL, it seems. Also SOL: parents who cannot get married because retrofuck jackholes in their state have made it illegal. Great solution you have there, Pastor White. I think we should call it a "bullshit solution".
Reverend Ralph White, the pastor of Bloomfield Full Gospel Baptist Church in Memphis, is trying to set a precedent when it comes to teen pregnancies.
"We will do it, but not in the church setting," he said. "We'll go to the home or if they want to have an event somewhere, we'll go there and do it."
White said he hopes to send a message to young fathers: step up and provide for your family.
"Biblically speaking, a man who doesn't take care of his children or family is worst than an infidel," he said.
There are congregations who address these issues the right way. You might want to try some learning yourself, Pastor White, instead of trying to teach unmarried parents a lesson via shame from your propped up high horse.
Scenes from the Snowpocalypse
This morning, the sun came out, and the snow-covered world is just unimaginably beautiful, despite being inconvenient and dangerous. There is nowhere to safely walk Dudley—the snow in the backyard is knee-deep, the sidewalks are buried, and the roads are unsafe; when I was out walking him this morning, after strapping on his purple balloon boats and coat, we had to run out of the way of a fishtailing car and saw a big collision at the intersection near our house, when a car slid through the stop sign and plowed into an SUV, pushing it into a telephone pole. We're going to have to try to clear a path in the backyard tonight.
And we're fortunate that that's our biggest problem. We haven't lost electricity, we've had no injuries from the snow or ice (touch wood), and we've got a roof over our heads. Others are not so lucky.
So the snow is really no fun. But it does look beautiful.
A bit of snow-covered holly, poking through the slats of the front porch.
A bright red cardinal, who likes to hang out in the vines outside my office window.
He flitted around for ages, his red a stark splash of color in the winter landscape.
Icicles already beginning to melt in the sunshine.
Snow-covered vines.
The snow has created some beautiful shapes on rooftops in the area.
This is a particularly lovely formation over our garage.
Shadow of a tree in the snow covering our front yard.
Sophie sitting on the back of the couch, checking out the results of the storm.
Olivia and Matilda looking out the front door.
Matilda is not impressed.
A shot I took yesterday, on a grayer day, of the humongous amounts of snow.
Another one from yesterday, looking down the length of our driveway.
Our back porch, decorated by the storm.
Iain putting on his boots; Dudley looks worried. "You're not making me go out there, are you?"
Nope—Iain was just going out to shovel.
Livs and Sophs at the front door, with reflection of wintry landscape.
My reflection in our dirty window, taking pictures.
An Observation
Troll Logic:
1. It is censorship to criticize something with which you disagree.
2. It is not censorship to tell me to STFU.
For the record, neither of these things are censorship. (Nor, as an aside, is prohibiting certain types of content on one's personal blog.) I just find it interesting that if I say, "I object to this thing," I am a censor and enemy of the First Amendment. But if a troll says, "I object to your objection," which is frequently couched in silencing or overtly eliminationist language, they are champions of Free Speech.
All of this happens without a trace of irony.
#dearjohn: No On 3
The good news: Republicans have stripped the "forcible rape" language out of the bill. We've made enough noise to stop their redefinition of rape.
The bad news: The rest of the bill still "contains numerous provisions that appear to dramatically expand federal limits on abortion funding, including a clause that limits the incest exemption to girls under the age of 18 and language that makes it tougher for women to obtain abortion coverage through their private insurers."
Even stripped of its attack on survivors of rape, the legislation remains an attack on people who need to terminate a pregnancy, particularly people in marginalized and/or vulnerable populations. Young women, poor women, trans men, and others, who are disproportionately targeted by reproductive coercion and/or sexual violence, and thus are most likely to be in need of government assistance to terminate unwanted pregnancies, are now under attack from the Republican Party in yet another way. As are all people who can get pregnant and quite reasonably expect that their private insurers pay for legal healthcare services.
So keep up the pressure. Keep calling, keep emailing, and keep making noise so we can stop this reprehensible assault on reproductive rights in its tracks.
