Hosted by a clockwork necklace.
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!
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for stalking.]
Do You Have a Jealousy Problem?, which Shaker lizardbreath, who gets the hat tip, aptly summarizes as: "I'm so glad big burly science brains [studied] why crappy things people do make people feel crappy, the results of which are characterized as OMG LADiEEEZ AMIRITE?!"
I'll just add that the author of the piece is Maura Kelly, last seen writing a loathsome fat-hating piece for the same garbage publication. Color me unsurprised that Kelly's thinking on the issue of jealousy is equally failful: There is not, in fact, a direct line from jealousy (even real jealousy, and not the "being shocked at being treated like shit" that's masquerading as jealousy here) to "turn[ing] into a Lisa Nowak—the NASA astronaut who drove 900 miles from Texas to Florida, in a disguise consisting of a wig and trench coat, while wearing an adult diaper (so she wouldn't have to make a rest stop) with a small arsenal of weapons (including a four-inch buck knife) so that she could corner her ex-boyfriend's new girl in a parking garage and threaten her."
I Have Officially...
...reached the point of apathy re: Osama bin Laden news. I'm certainly not arguing that's a good thing, but that's what is.
It's not that I don't think there are important conversations to be had about the assassination of Osama bin Laden (see: Nezua's post), but those conversations largely aren't the ones happening.
I just really can't be arsed to give a shit about what Andrew Breitbart thinks about Hillary Clinton covering her mouth or what the jackasses at Time's 2004 Blog of the Year claim about this execution validating Bush torture policies, and I sure as shit can't bring myself to take seriously a ridiculous debate about how President Obama taking down flags at Ground Zero because he's an illegitimate Muslim or whatthefuckever.
I'm still not sure I know exactly how I feel about the killing of Osama bin Laden, but I am positively certain that the public discourse which followed is an absolute disgrace.
What I'm Listening To
Video Description: There is no video; just a static shot of the comedian, actor, and writer Paul F. Tompkins. The audio is Tompkins singing The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" (lyrics here), but in a kind of loungy, sardonic way.
True Fact: Paul F. Tompkins will play the role of Paul T. Spud in Shakesville: The Movie.
OMGLOLWTF WHUT?!
With content like that, it's a wonder Fox canceled his show.
[Commenting Guidelines: Disablist comments musing about Beck's psychological state or outright calling him crazy, nuts, deranged, delusional, unstable, a lunatic, in need of commitment, etc. are both unwelcome and not on-topic. I have a mental disorder, for example. It doesn't make me a lying rightwing dipshit.]
Principles!
GOP presidential nominee wannabe Tim Pawlenty has them!
HA HA JUST KIDDING.
Thursday night's Republican debate was worth watching if only to see Tim Pawlenty try to talk his way around his previous support for efforts to cut planet-warming emissions. As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty not only acknowledged that climate change is a problem, but also endorsed a cap-and-trade plan to deal with it. That makes him something of a pariah among other Republicans these days."I apologize from the bottom of my heart for ever having hinted that I have the capacity for reason. Please forgive me, Republican base."
In a very "This is Your Life" moment, the Fox debate hosts replayed a 2007 ad that Pawlenty recorded for the Environmental Defense Fund in which he argues for cap and trade as a solution for climate change. When asked to discuss the ad, Pawlenty abashedly replied, "Do we have to?"
After trying to explain that he didn't actually support cap and trade policy as governor—he just supported the "study" of it—Pawlenty decided to try apologizing:
"I've said I was wrong. It was a mistake, and I'm sorry," Mr. Pawlenty told the Fox television audience, presumably filled with potential Republican primary voters. "You're going to have a few clunkers in your record, and we all do, and that's one of mine. I just admit it. I don't try to duck it, bob it, weave it, try to explain it away. I'm just telling you, I made a mistake."
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud distributors of Spudsy Brand Accordion Straps, "for the strapping accordion player in all of us!"
Recommended Reading:
scatx: These Are the Democrats Who Voted for HR3
Tommy: On HR3
Chris: Attorney General Holder Vacates Immigration Decision Based on DOMA
Ta-Nehisi: Black Privilege
Lara: The Problems with Nadine Dorries' Motion
crunktastic: We Need Each Other to Survive: On Recovery and Reclamation
Resistance: Earthquake Relief
Leave your links in comments...
Whoooooooooops
So there's this article in Time titled "Masculinity, a Delicate Flower," which is all about how men are obliged to establish, assert, and constantly maintain their masculinity throughout their lives. It's a very basic article, so superficial in its examination of the concepts of gender construction and performance, and so imprecise in drawing any distinction between socialized gender expectations and gender essentialism, that it would hardly be worth mentioning to this crowd were it not for its concluding paragraph:
The authors said this research also begins to illuminate the negative effects of gender on men — depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and violence. And, at the very least, it may persuade ladies to cut their guys a little slack. "When I was younger I felt annoyed by my male friends who would refuse to hold a pocketbook or say whether they thought another man was attractive. I thought it was a personal shortcoming that they were so anxious about their manhood. Now I feel much more sympathy for men," [psychologist and researcher Jennifer K. Bosson] said in a statement.*insert the sound of record scratching here*
Whoa whoa whoa there, partner. First of all, "depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and violence" are not "the negative effects of gender." They are the negative effects of the Patriarchy, and conformity thereto. That's not a matter of semantics; that's the whole fucking point.
It isn't being male, nor being a man, that is a problem, but believing that to be male, or to be a man, is to have to project a very specific and rigid definition of masculinity—which defines itself in contradistinction to the feminine, thus forcing men to conceal and deny any part of themselves that anyone could call feminine; which limits men's emotional spectrum to anger; which forces men to exist in a permanent state of insecurity, constantly monitoring the boundaries of their masculinity and engaging in displays of bravado to prove their self-worth; which considers sheer brawn and physical toughness the only acceptable kind of strength, while the kind of strength which informs one's character, what might be described as emotional strength, the kind of strength that means walking away from a fight, or being patient, or showing empathy, isn't allowed to play much of a role at all in the definition of masculinity—which leaves men, whose physical attributes of masculine strength will wane with time and age, keenly aware that their masculinity is ever threatened by their own mortality, because they haven't been encouraged to cultivate a compassion and resiliency that can't be measured in kilos or KOs.
That's not about being a man. That's about being a man in a Patriarchy, who's never been offered an alternative paradigm.
Well. I've got an offer for you, gents! (Though you needn't just listen to me!)
And, suffice it to say, I don't agree with the contention that an awareness of how the Patriarchy hurts men, too, should "persuade ladies to cut their guys a little slack." Women don't have the luxury of "slack." Most gay/bi men don't have the luxury of "slack." Most trans* men don't have the luxury of "slack." Many men who are physically disabled, many men with dwarfism, many men with psychological disabilities, any man who is (wrongly) perceived, for whatever reason, to be "weak" via some inability to conform to the exacting demands of the Patriarchal male norm, don't have the luxury of "slack."
Slack is a privilege.
Understanding that subscribing to Patriarchy-approved narratives of masculinity is the issue, not some innate maleness, but something over which men have some control, have a choice, means that if "ladies" (and all the other men who have made a different choice regarding masculinity) are persuaded to do anything, it should be to expect more.
Once upon a time, I suggested to Iain that something he was doing (which was pissing me off) stemmed from a latent sexist notion that it was his prerogative as The Man to do this specific thing, which is not an accusation I wield carelessly or often; I have little reason to, since Iain is rationally egalitarian—and viscerally egalitarian for the most part, too. Anyway, we talked it out, and Iain was generously honest, saying that, yeah, that was the reason he was doing it and, wow, he hadn't realized it, but, shit, that feeling was totally there, ick. No hard feelings; it's not like I've never been called out for deeply internalized bullshit. We move forward with a new understanding.
It took a long time to get there, though, and at one point, Iain had said, "You know, if you weren't a feminist, this probably wouldn't even bother you."
I replied, "No, if I weren't a feminist, it would still bother me, but instead of acknowledging that you're an indoctrinated member of a patriarchy just like I am, I'd just think you were being a lousy shithead."
He chewed on that for a moment, and then said, "Fuck."
That was the first time Iain really understood how my feminism was benefiting him—that feminism doesn't make me see problems that aren't there, but provides the tools which allow me to analyze and prescribe solutions based on a context larger than my immediate experience. And existent outside the narrowly-drawn borders of constrictive stereotyping.
Implicit in feminism/womanism is not only the belief, but the expectation, that men are not brutish nor infantile—nor stupid, useless, inept, emotionally stunted, or any other negative stereotype feminists have been accused of promoting—but instead our equals just as much as we are theirs, capable not only of understanding feminism (and feminists), but of actively and rigorously engaging challenges to their socialization, too.
Feminists, of course, have the terrible reputation, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who root for the patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
I don't have slack to offer men. What I have is the alternative to a life spent swallowing one's emotions and feeling a constant anxious insecurity where one's contended self-esteem should be—and that seems a lot more valuable to me than "slack."
Brazil Recognizes Civil Unions
(TW for violence and homophobia in the linked article.)
Brazil's Supreme Court ruled yesterday that same-sex civil unions must be recognized. According to the AP "The ruling, however, stopped short of legalizing gay marriage in Brazil."
Brazil's high court ruled that gay couples are entitled to "the same legal rights as heterosexual pairs when it comes to alimony, retirement benefits of a partner who dies and inheritances."
Go, Brazil!
The Catholic Church, of course, opposed the measure.
Happy 40th Birthday, Spudsy!!!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
You like to sit in the dark eating braunschweiger
while watching bad mooooooovieeeeees…
And OMG Shoez I do, too!
I love you, Spudsy.
Thank you for being a friend.
xoxox
Question of the Day
What decorative body modifications have you made, if any?
I've never had anything done, aside from getting my ears pierced when I was a kid and dying my hair. I'm all for pretty much any kind of body modification (You want a bifurcated tongue? I will celebrate your bifurcated tongue!), but I've never had a compelling desire to do anything myself.
I love the look of tattoos, and rather fancy getting one, although I've never come to any decision about what I might like to get. I'd quite like something decorative on my hands, but I've had tattooists tell me they don't recommend intricate work on the hands, because maintaining it is tough.
I imagine I'll probably spend my life vaguely contemplating now and again what sort of tattoo I'd like to get, and never actually getting one. Or, I'll wake up one day with a bug up my ass and come home inked to the nines.
Get Me to the Fainting Couch, Minerva!
I am positively SHOCKED, I tell you, to hear the news that the GOP's first presidential hopefuls debate tonight in South Carolina will be preceded by a "Freedom Rally" that is sponsored by rightwing extremists groups!
Fetch me the smelling salts and a mint julep! My heart can't handle the alarm that the GOP's big tent is not, in fact, full of diversity and rainbows, but a bunch of sad old white bigots!
Mercy.
* * *
In all seriousness, my optimism for progressive and inclusive change is nearly boundless. Frankly, it has to be to do this job every day. Not only do I expect more, but I quite genuinely hope and fervently believe that most people are capable of delivering better and coming to expect more of themselves, given the desire and opportunity.
But I did say nearly boundless—and the boundaries of my expectation go just as far as the borders of the Grand Old Party.
I have no hope for them. For them, I have naught but contempt.
And, apparently, Victorian sarcasm.
Daily Dose of Cute
We recently had to retire Dudley's BFF Piggy, because Dudley had played with Piggy so much that he'd reached the squeakers. So one day I snuck Piggy away to the kitchen bin heaven, and soon afterward brought home Monkey, who is Dudley's new BFF.
There has been much squeaking and tug-of-war fun with Monkey, as well as lots of cuddly naptime.
As I mentioned when we first got Dudley, just over a year ago, he came to us baffled by the concept of toys, after life at a racetrack where he was never given any. I said then: "One of our challenges is to bring out the happy-go-lucky inner dog in him. Too much enthusiasm scares him, so it's confidence-building first, and then we'll learn how to have fun!" A year later, I feel like we've had real success. He is an extremely playful pup now, who will actually go and get toys (especially his yellow blanket) and bring them to us when he wants some playtime.
It is a marked difference from when he first arrived, and would cringe away if we lifted a hand too high in an attempt to play.
I have noted before the surprise with which Dudley is greeted now by his foster parents at the rescue, who remember the timid, anxious, unconfident dog he was when he came off the track—and I sometimes imagine, when I look at him now, what he makes of that distant past.
It is said that dogs don't remember, but this morning Dudley gave a terrifying shriek in his sleep. I ran into the other room where he slept and called out his name. He leapt up and looked at me with what I would swear was a look of relief, and ran to me with a wagging tail. I knelt down and he put his head on my shoulder. He wanted to feel safe.
And then, he wanted to play.
We went out into the backyard and ran in mad circles together. When we came back in, he cuddled up with Monkey on his big tartan pillow beside my desk, where he gave a big heaving sigh of contentment and soon fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
He lies there often while I work, sometimes napping and sometimes just resting, keeping his big brown eyes on me in the hope I might drop a bit of sandwich.
And when he wants to play, I play—because he needs it; because he is owed at least that much; because he is a survivor, just like me.
Dudley and Monkey in Two-Legs' office.
The National Day of Prayer: Encouraging Christian Supremacists Since 1952
by Shaker Jadelyn, linguist, witch, feminist, pacifist, progressive, activist, writer, queer, gamer, musician, exile, lover, and superhero, in no particular order.
[Trigger warning for Christian supremacy.]
Today, May 5th, is the National Day of Prayer here in the U.S. By law, enacted by Congress in 1952 (and amended in 1988 to fix the date on the first Thursday in May every year), the President is required to issue a proclamation declaring a national day of prayer. Obama's proclamation for this year can be found here. The main organization promoting the NDoP, and which organizes the vast majority of NDoP events throughout the country, is the National Day of Prayer Task Force (NDoPTF) chaired by none other than Shirley Dobson, the wife of James Dobson, founders of Focus on Your Own Damn Family, a nationally-known fundie Christian org. Which kind of makes it hard to believe that the NDoP is not a sectarian act of government-sanctioned proselytism, as its backers insist. When the main organization organizing events for a government-sanctioned observance is a fundamentalist Christian organization, and the events themselves are themed around a quotation from Christian scripture, well. Suffice to say the quacking is getting awfully loud, despite protestations that it is not, in fact, a duck.
The theme NDOoPTF has chosen for this year is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", taken from Psalm 91:2, which reads: "I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust." They make the usual noise about the terrible state America is in - which, I agree with them, but I rather suspect our reasons for that belief wildly diverge - and have even given us the thoughtful gift of an absolutely terribad promo video.
[Video Description at end of post.]
It's the music that really makes it, y'know? A day of prayer – which, in many traditions is a quiet, meditative reflection on and connection with one's deity – is totes the same as an actiony disaster movie, amirite? Well, perhaps if you consider the NDoP to be a disaster. *rimshot*
But whatever happened to the ruling from last year, wherein a judge in Wisconsin found the requirement of a NDoP to be unconstitutional? If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, why is it still being celebrated? Why has Obama issued the 2011 proclamation (aside from his terrible predilection for pandering to people who will never vote for him)?
Unfortunately, the 7th Circuit overturned the ruling on appeal last month. They ruled that, since the law requiring declaration of the NDoP each year only directly affects the President (by requiring hir to issue the proclamation), only the President has suffered sufficient injury from the statute to challenge it. Thus, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has no standing to challenge the NDoP. The decision, which was 3-0, declared:
Plaintiffs contend that they are injured because they feel excluded, or made unwelcome, when the President asks them to engage in a religious observance that is contrary to their own principles.... [However] offense at the behavior of the government, and a desire to have public officials comply with (plaintiffs’ view of) the Constitution, differs from a legal injury. The "psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees" is not an "injury" for the purpose of standing.The concurring opinion defended the decision by saying SCOTUS hasn't defined "injury" in the context of Establishment Clause cases well enough yet to give FFRF and other non-religious (or religious but Constitutionally-inclined) citizens standing based on "psychological injury" resulting from the blatant Othering of non-belief a Presidentially-declared Day of Prayer foments.
And so we have it that, in 20-fucking-11, President Obama – the only President to ever consistently include the phrase "believers and non-believers" in his speeches, yet who attempted to have FFRF's case against the NDoP thrown out before the initial ruling was given – has issued the yearly National Day of Prayer proclamation asking "...all people of faith to join me in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation."
FFRF has said they will seek en banc rehearing (review by the full court, not just the 3-judge panel). Welp. I know what I'm praying for today, then. And it's sure as fuck not "asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation." If it comes to a contest between God as interpreted by Christian Dominionists and "the forces of hell" as represented by those who would see the Constitution's Establishment Clause respected, well. I'm gonna have to side with the forces of hell on this one.
[Crossposted at Witch Words.]
--------------------
[Video Description: Calm but faintly ominous-sounding instrumental music over a montage of "heartland" shots: a farmhouse, a windmill over waving grain fields, a white one-room-schoolhouse style church, with the sky above all these showing gathering roiling clouds oddly lit from within. Panning across a carefully-planned-to-look-multicultural group of people (black guy, Asian woman, white child, but with all older white people in the background pews) sitting in a church pew with blank but attentive faces. Cuts to a black man standing at the pulpit of the church, gesturing and reading from the Bible. A shadow falls over his face and he looks up as if startled. The music suddenly shifts to full-on ominous disaster-movie-trailer and cuts to a dark cloudy background with all-caps text in gold reading "What if we didn't respond to the call to prayer?" The cloudy background flickers with reddish lightning. Cuts to wide shot of grassy plain with a single run-down-looking old house to one side, the sky increasingly full of those weirdly-lit boiling clouds. Then to a white teenaged girl sitting on her bed, picking up a Bible from the bed beside her as if going to read from it. She looks up consideringly, the room darkens suddenly and she looks worried. She gets up and walks to the narrow window in the room. This whole time, the music is sounding like it's been ripped straight from a 90's disaster movie trailer. She looks out at the weird, tumultuous clouds. Cut back to cloudy background with all-caps gold text: "What if we forgot the God of our fathers?" More reddish lightning. Cut to a Latino-looking young teenaged boy sitting on a couch with a Wiimote in hand as if playing a video game. The room darkens suddenly. He looks up, gets up and goes to the window to look at more weird clouds. Back to cloudy background and all-caps gold text: "What if we didn't care?" The music is really getting into it, adding wordless female chorus voices in descant over the throbbing drumbeat. This would be the part where the plane is plummeting in flames, or the earthquake opens a jagged canyon in the earth and people start falling in, in the trailer the music probably came from. Cuts back to the Latino boy, going to a table and picking up a Bible. Then to the white teen girl, opening her Bible. The music abruptly stops as she looks down, and it shows the page she's opened to in Psalms. Psalm 91 is shown up-close, then the page gets all weird and blurry and streams of light seem to be coming out from behind verse 2 "I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.", obscuring everything else. The music fades in again on a single-note crescendo until it bursts back into full disaster-movie glory and the video cuts to a blue sky with passing clouds and some odd dissolve-text effects resolving to read "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" in white. Cut to the one-room-schoolhouse church interior, pews cleared and a semicircle of white people kneeling on the wood floor with black guy and Asian woman strategically positioned off to one side. The two teens enter and go to the empty space in the center and both kneel, clasping their hands in their laps and bowing their heads with everyone else. Scene pans across the room of kneeling people, and we see that the Latino teen, black guy and Asian woman were the only non-white people there. Cuts to the Capitol building, backlit by those dark roiling lightning-filled clouds. Then the Golden Gate Bridge, looking inward toward the Bay, also topped by those weird clouds. Fades to the kneeling teens, then immediately fades to the outside of the white church, where a hole slowly opens in the dark clouds, seeming filled with white light. Quick fade to a white family kneeling in prayer inside the church, then to a steeple with beams of white light breaking up the dark cloud behind it. The Golden Gate Bridge again with those beams of light starting to break through the clouds. Cuts to a time-lapse shot of some city on a body of water at dusk, clouds streaming over the sky and lights coming on along the shore, with white text reading, "He Created the Heavens." Text dissolves, image fades to a time-lapse shot of a mountain peak covered in snow with white text reading, "He Set the Mountains in Place". Cuts to a shot of an older white man who looks suspiciously like Dubya, face upraised in either a serious prayerful expression or an expression of constipation (it's kind of hard to tell. Can't the religious reich afford decent actors?), and hands clasped before his face, light shining on him. Text beside him reads, "There is Hope...In Prayer!" He bows his head, text dissolves. Cut to a loltastic created shot involving the Capitol, the White House, and the Jefferson Memorial all side-by-side and sort of layered over each other where they overlap, a pair of disembodied hands reaching up from the bottom of the frame and slowly grasping each other in interlocked-fingers-prayer-position, while an American flag with no apparent means of support waves from the left side of the frame, and lightning flickers across a strip of dark clouds above the Representing Washington DC building mashup. Text falls into place reading "Join With Millions in Prayer", then the NDoPTF logo reverse-dissolves into place below that, superimposed over the mashup. The music comes to a dramatic climax, cuts off for a dramatic moment, then comes slamming back as the screen goes black and "05.05.2011" written in glowy disaster-movie font zooms in, then flashes to "www.NationalDayofPrayer.org" backlit by a lens flare. The music finishes with a dramatic flourish and the whole thing fades to black. Fin.]
Shelton Apologizes
[TW for homophobia and violence.]
On the heels of last night's homophobic tweet (see here and here), Blake Shelton has apologized:
Hey y'all allow me to seriously apologize for the misunderstanding with the whole re-write on the Shania song last night...Later Shelton said:
@glaad hey I want my fans and @nbcthevoice fans to know that anti-gay and lesbian violence is unacceptable!!!!! Help me!!!!I hope Shelton has learned that homophobia and gay bashing are nothing to joke about. And maybe GLAAD will take him up on his plea for help. Sounds like Shelton may be willing to be educated a little on the subject. Good on him if that's true.
(Via.)
