Shakesville

Unreal

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Epulsive) is a colossal thunderfuck.

Firefighters and rescue workers who arrived in Joplin, MO, found that the deadly tornado that hit the state Sunday had left a "barren, smoky wasteland" in its path. Rescue workers worked through more storms in an effort to find potential survivors, even as the death toll rose to at least 119. President Obama pledged full support to the state Monday, telling survivors, "We're here with you. We're going to stay by you."

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), however, said that before Congress approved federal funds for disaster relief, it had to offset the spending with cuts to other programs. The Washington Times reports:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri's tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

"If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental," Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term "pay-fors" is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.
...UPDATE: Cantor posted an update on Twitter, saying, "Our hearts are w/ victims of #Joplin tragedy. House #GOP ready to help & has found offsets for emergency $$$."

Well, at least we can all rest assured that the cuts aren't coming from tornado forecasting funding...because the GOP-led House already voted to "eliminate funding to replace the environmental satellites that help make our forecasts a reality."

[H/T to Shaker Danielle.]

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes: "Mad About Me" **

** AKA: John Williams: "Cantina Band"

First Official Endorsement: 2012

a campaign banner featuring a picture of a goat and a paperclip wearing a flag lapel pin, backed by an American flag, and reading Goat|Paperclip 2012

Shakesville officially endorses the GOP ticket Goat|Paperclip 2012.
[Background here.]

I Get Letters

The following email arrived in my inbox under the subject heading "I am a boy. I come in peace.‏" I knew I was in for a doozy.

Hi Melissa,

First, as a boy raised in a strict Catholic household with two working parents, I can say I respect your blog. However, I cannot say I wholly appreciate your content.

I used to work for [redacted]. In my first day (as with any job) we were given sensitivity training. However, ALL the scenarios given in the presentation were male-to-female sexual harassment, something that I, as a man, found extremely offended by.

I only worked at the U for six months. What forced me to leave? My boss, a fairly attractive woman in her 40's, was coming onto me. [details redacted]

This actually happened, and I'm not making it up. Don't say I blew her off because she was older or because she wasn't my type. I have very strict values that I don't date or get involved with ANYONE from work.

I do not appreciate your ignorance to these double standards. That it is only "sexual harassment" if it's male-to-female and if it's the other way around that I must be "a lucky guy."

I went on to work at [redacted]. There, I found that, as a man, earning the same as other women working on the production floor, was subject to more work. Many women refused to do any manual labor and took too many bathroom breaks, and subjected themselves to handpacking and paperwork. Whenever one of the machines jammed or stalled, rather than clearing the jam and resetting the machine, they call a mechanic which takes away from production output and creates downtime.

I'm not saying all women, there are some (mainly black, actually) that roll up their sleeves to get their hands dirty with the boys, and that I deeply admire and appreciate.

I have tried to address the issue of "we have the same job title yet because we're men we are subject to more work" and I got called "insensitive"...screw that. You have the same job title as me, you do the same things I do. No exceptions. This is the 21st century. Girls are not weak and fragile flowers. They're at the point in history where they can pick up a shovel and dig ditches alongside the men that love them and care for them.

What happened to the women who welded and riveted the machines that won the war? Where did they disappear to?

Thank you.

--[redacted]

I'll leave you to discuss the many comment-worthy details of this extraordinary missive in comments, and will make only this brief observation: It is neither "coming in peace" nor "respectful of my blog" to accuse me of content I have never written and attitudes I have never expressed.

Half (or more) of the letters I get from dipfucks like this are patently nothing more than disgruntled misogynists shouting impotently at the first feminist across whom they've stumbled, without the merest regard for the reality that the double standards of which they accuse me are the narratives of the Patriarchy, not of its critics.

Academic Epidemic

[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]

This article in The Atlantic on the rape epidemic in DR Congo is...odd.

On the one hand, I am incredibly interested in and supportive of rigorous study of sexual violence, because good solutions are indeed rooted in a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the culture of sexual violence.

On the other hand, the way the information is presented here ultimately reads as a weird discouragement against activism.

"This research matters because an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of the nature and causes of the rape crisis in the DRC will lead to inappropriate and ineffective policy responses," writes author Laura Seay, which is right on, but then she immediately follows that observation with: "'Sensitizing' soldiers about the criminal nature of rape won't do much to stop civilians from raping their neighbors, or husbands from committing marital rape against their wives."

Well, sure, engaging soldiers with rape prevention isn't a direct solution to civilian rape, but reducing institutionally-sanctioned rape has a reverberating effect within any culture. (And I trust that Seay doesn't actually imagine "soldiers" and "husbands" to be mutually exclusive groups.) Suggesting that there is little value to the civilian population in directing rape prevention efforts at soldiers does not come across as supportive of comprehensive rape prevention, but rather the very opposite.

There also seems to be some straw-building here: I read and write about the rape epidemic in DR Congo quite a bit, and rarely do I find activists advocating singular solutions at the expense of comprehensive rape prevention, e.g. awareness-raising with soldiers but not civilians. Seay makes a good point about the disparity in state and NGO resource allocation, but it does raise the question about who the "we" actually is in the headline "Do We Have the Congo Rape Crisis All Wrong?"

And, again, the good point about disproportionately allocated resources—"the overwhelming international focus on rape also means that other services are shortchanged"—gets immediately undermined by a strangely discouraging sentiment: "As Baaz and Stern note, the focus on rape and the subsequent burst of humanitarian focus on the crisis creates perverse incentives for women to falsely present themselves as rape victims in order to access health care."

That does not read as an exhortation for the international community to increase the scope of its outreach to include additional attention on healthcare access, but as an admonishment to stop paying so much darn attention to sexual violence.

Surely, that was not Seay's intention, but that's why I find the entire article so odd, and so frustrating. Especially as it ends on this note:

Another problem with the overwhelming humanitarian focus on rape is that it, as journalist Howard French pointed out out, feeds into some of the worst popular stereotypes about Africa. It makes it easier for policy makers to dismiss the Congolese crisis as savagery rather than as the product of a political crisis in the midst of state failure. It is only by adapting a more balanced understanding of the Congo's political, economic, and humanitarian challenges that we can be in a position to undertake a far more daunting, and more important, challenge than studying DRC sexual violence: doing something to stop it.

I mean, there's so much whatthefuckery there, I don't even know where to begin. Suffice it to say that talking about the need for "adapting a more balanced understanding" of DR Congo, immediately after tacitly suggesting dimming the spotlight on rape in DR Congo because of stereotypes of savagery that exist due to our own unwillingness to be honest about the ubiquity of rape in Western culture, is tremendously unfortunate, to put it politely.

Then there is this: The article makes no serious mention of strategies that empower Congolese survivors and potential victims of sexual violence. It's all from a perspective of intervention, rather than alliance and support. That's not incidental: That's a problem in and of itself, for reasons of efficacy and of agency. Addressing a rape crisis from a colonialist perspective that subverts agency is as bitterly ironic as it is unhelpful.

And I guess that underlines what the real problem with this article is: The biggest challenge is not really our understanding of DR Congo and its rape crisis, but our own cultural attitudes toward sexual violence, prevention, and empowerment. And toward the people of DR Congo.

What I Did on My Summer Spring Vacation

the back of my head, looking out over the city from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building

Me, looking out over the city from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building. Photo by Iain.
So I tried to publish my holiday post at Shakesville, but for some reason it kept fucking up the page, so you can read it here instead, if you're so inclined.

Open Thread

Hosted by an Ood.

Question of the Day

In whose general direction are you farting today?

Me: Giuliani.

March of the Privileged Clueless

by Shaker librarian314

I make it a point to regularly peruse the Washington Post as it's my local paper, being a denizen of the greater Washington, DC metro area. One of the "gems" from this morning's paper was a piece by Peter Whoriskey entitled: "On path to riches, no sign of fluffy majors." The article tries to discuss the findings of a study done by Georgetown University's Center for the Education and the Workforce on the value of an undergraduate education—but fails abysmally.

The overview of Whoriskey's article is that, when viewed across an entire career, those with bachelor's degrees in engineering, comp sci, and business, make more than those with bachelor's degrees in education, English, the arts, and psychology, the so called "fluffy" majors, as named by whomever's penning the headlines for Whoriskey's stories. The author decided that the best way to determine the relative value of a college degree was how much earning potential one had when one graduated in the field in which they studied.

He cites findings from the Georgetown study, which state that:

The individual major with the highest median earnings was petroleum engineering, at $120,000, followed by pharmaceutical sciences at $105,000, and math and computer sciences at $98,000.

The lowest earnings median was for those majoring in counseling or psychology, at $29,000, and early childhood education, at $36,000. Workers with a bachelor's degree in English language and literature, the most popular major within the humanities, have median earnings of $48,000.

He also helpfully notes: "Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business are as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who major in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology, according to an analysis by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce."

**sigh**

Thanks, dude, for mansplaining to me that what I studied in college has minimal monetary value and that I should have studied something that would have paid better. I would have never figured it out on my own!

The privileged cluelessness of this dude is grating. The fact that he wrote the entire piece and never considered, or at least never addressed, in even the most cursory way, the part gender plays both in what majors people choose, and the jobs they go on to get and keep, and their earning potential over a lifetime, shows me he's got no real understanding of the complexities of the situation. The fact that the "fluffy" majors often require an advanced degree to get the slightly better paying jobs is equally ignored.

A much better write-up of the original study which uses Census data from the last 40 years to track the salaries of those with bachelor's degrees, without advanced degrees, and working full-time can be found at Inside Higher Ed, entitled "Major Decisions" by Kevin Kiley. This actually discusses both the gender and ethnic biases in employment and monetary remuneration that the study discovered, which Whoriskey, of the Post article, totally ignores. This review also includes the fact that, "that graduate degrees have been essentially required for some undergraduate majors if those students were to find good jobs."

The Inside Higher Ed article highlights that higher education is worth it because, "college graduates, on average, have made 84 percent more over their lifetime than individuals with only a high school diploma, and almost every major tends to be worth it in the end, students from some majors are locked into career paths that don't pay well." The plight of early childhood education majors was particularly noted as having especially poor advancement potential.

I just wish that Whoriskey had done a better job of reporting the findings of the Georgetown study. He boiled it down into a useless, meaningless sludge that totally erases our cultural biases against caring professions and creativity. I wish he'd used his space to actually say something helpful.

Marriage Equality in Minnesota

It's been almost thirty-five years since I lived in Minneapolis, but it's part of my heritage; my father was born and raised there, and I have a lot of great memories of the years I spent in grad school there at the University of Minnesota. Back then, in the mid-70's, the state had a reputation of populist liberalism seasoned with the pragmatic decency of the rural parts of the state where live-and-let-live was the way you treated other people. The Democrats, known as the DFL for Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, gave the state people like Hubert Humphrey, who, before he became a senator and vice-president, was the mayor of Minneapolis. In 1948 he demanded that the Democrats make civil rights a forefront in their presidential campaign -- and drove the Dixiecrats out. Minnesota was the home of Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy, and Paul Wellstone, and the state also led in the fight for decent healthcare for the poor and fairness for all people.

Minneapolis was also the city where I came out of the closet. Back in the 1970's it was a very active city for gay rights and it had a thriving LGBT community, and not just among us theatre folk. Even though this was years before the AIDS epidemic, there were LGBT organizations that looked out for the health and well-being of gay citizens. In 1976, it seemed like Minnesota was the example for the rest of the country to follow in equality.

So I don't know where Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and homophobic preachers like Bradlee Dean come from, and I don't know what would lead the Republican-led state legislature to come up with something like this:

After a long, passionate and solemn debate that lasted deep into the night, the Minnesota House passed a proposed constitutional amendment on Saturday to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Voters will decide the question in November 2012. The final vote was 70-62. Four Republicans voted no. Two Democrats voted yes.

"I do not believe it is up to judges or even this body, but it should be up to Minnesotans," said Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, sponsor of the bill. But he said his beliefs are not paramount: "It is not about what I think. It is about what we think as Minnesotans."

In personal, sometimes tearful speeches, opponents said the amendment is wrong.

"Members, I understand discrimination. I have experienced discrimination. And have felt discrimination," said Rep. John Ward, DFL-Brainerd, who often holds his microphone in a shrunken hand. "If you think there is a tiny bit of discrimination in this amendment, I beg you, I ask you, I implore you to vote no."

The amendment question will set off multimillion-dollar campaigns from both sides. It also is expected to draw in national donors, operatives and attention, as did campaigns in several dozen other states that have voted on the issue.

Minnesota law already bans gay marriage, but backers of the proposal say only a constitutional amendment could keep courts from deciding the issue. An amendment also works around DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, who said he opposes it with "every fiber" of his being. Governors have no veto over constitutional amendments passed by a legislative majority.

If certain other states where I've lived have set examples for bigoted politicians and in-the-pocket legislatures and held patents on intolerant preachers -- hello Colorado and Florida -- it's not that much of a surprise; there have always been sharp political divisions in those states and the scales tilt back and forth. (Florida, though, is taking its own sweet time to get back to normal.) But Minnesota... practical, pragmatic, fair, friendly -- there's something bonding about enjoying a quiet evening at home when it's -35F or sailing on Lake Minnetonka and battling the mosquitoes. So what was it that drove it off the rails?

---

Footnote: One thing Minnesotans are famous for is their dry sense of humor -- maybe that's where I get mine. When Tim Pawlenty, the state's former governor, announced he was running for president yesterday, the St. Paul Pioneer Press ran the news on the obituary page.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Houston, we have a problem.

Just about a year ago I posted about the Texas republican party platform that had just been finalized & voted on. It goes something like this:

[T]he Texas GOP seeks to end the state's lottery, which provides millions in funding to public education; restrict citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are citizens; end federal sponsorship of pre-kindergarten schools; impose a jail sentence on any illegal immigrant in the state; shut down all day-labor centers; cut off all bilingual education after a student's fourth year in a U.S. public school; legalize corporal punishment in public schools; mandate that evolution and global warming be "taught as challengeable scientific theory"; and demand that Congress evict the United Nations from U.S. soil and end American membership in the global body.

AND

We also believe that no homosexual or any individual convicted of child abuse or molestation should have the right to custody or adoption of a minor child, and that visitation with minor children by such persons should be prohibited but if ordered by the court limited to supervised periods.

Yep. The Texas GOP right there. So, anyway, just today that same GOP held itself a signing ceremony in Houston. Gov. Rick Perry (R-Eprehensible) already signed the bill last week but he decided he'd do it again to some pomp & circumstance...and evangelism:

Surrounded by cheering anti-abortion activists, Gov. Rick Perry joined lawmakers who led the passage of a bill requiring a sonogram for women seeking abortions and ceremonially signed the legislation Tuesday.

"Texas is a state that respects and defends life," Perry said, declaring that tens of thousands of abortions are performed in Texas each year. "Every one one of these lives lost is a tragedy."

[...]

Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, who has tried to pass the bill in previous sessions, said the timing wasn't right before, but that God was finally ready for passage.

"This was the time," he said. Patrick said if only 20 percent of the women viewing the sonograms decide against an abortion, 10,000 to 15,000 lives will be saved each year.

Women can decline to view the sonogram image and hear the fetal heartbeat, but, with some exceptions, they still must hear a description of the image.

Before the bill signing Patrick called it the best bill in the country, and afterward said, "Praise the Lord."

"The good news is through the blood of Jesus Christ he forgives, and women who have aborted children need to know that message," Patrick said.

According to the law, women will not only be forced into the ultrasound process but most will have to wait 24 hours AFTER having one to be able to go ahead with her abortion. There is a caveat for women who live more than 100 miles away--they "only" have to wait two hours.

I can't really pick out what is more disgusting and inappropriate (apart from the bill itself, that is): Perry signing a law AGAIN to show off for and appease the bloodlust party crowd of anti-abortion activists or Rep. Patrick's patronizing theocratic spewing. It's all appalling, intrusive, controlling bullshit dressed up in theocratic religious fervor shrieking about "saving babies"--and it's SOP for many state legislators these days.

[NOTE: This is NOT a thread to mock the whole state of Texas or all of its inhabitants. Don't go there, mmmkay?]

Daily Dose of Cute

Matilda sitting in foreground, while Olivia lies in the background

Lady Lioncut and the White Shadow

Oh, I See

Newt Gingrich is running a comedy campaign:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) [has named] former conservative Democratic senator [Georgia Sen. Zell Miller (D)] as a co-chairman of his 2012 presidential campaign.

Cool campaign co-chair! I can't wait to see him challenge Rudy Giuliani to a duel.

The best thing about Zell Miller will forever be Will Forte's impression of him on Saturday Night Live, which quite literally remains one of the funniest things I have ever seen on television. I would pay TENS OF DOLLARS to anyone who could get me video of that sketch, which doesn't seem to be available anywhere.

Quote of the Day

"I have been given the opportunity to share my firsthand experiences from the inside as I watch the fall of a policy that is undeniably discriminatory. By 'not asking' and 'not telling,' the people repressed by this policy have been robbed of their voice to speak out. As a result, the impact of such a policy doesn't hit close to home for enough families, friends, or coworkers. By blogging here, it is my goal to share the excitement felt by every gay and lesbian service member as this burden of lies, cover stories, and double lives is lifted."—Officer X, a new contributor to Time's "Battleland" military blog, who will be writing anonymously about the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" from inside the US military.

[Via Andy.]

Film Corner!

What in Fascination Street hell is this?! I mean, I rationally understand it's a teaser trailer for Sean Penn's upcoming film This Must Be the Place, in which he plays Cheyenne, a "bored, retired rock star [who] sets out to find his father's executioner, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the US," but, seriously, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

Close-up on Sean Penn, costumed as an aging goth rocker, making a face that I can only assume is meant to be an impression of a wounded baby bird. In voiceover, he says in an affected high voice with a strange cadence, "My father is dying of old age—a nonexistent disease—and I haven't flown in thirty years." Cut to Frances McDormand standing in a large garden, wearing what looks to be a firefighter's coat. Sean Penn walks across the expansive green toward her, pulling a suitcase behind him. "Fear of flying isn't your only problem," says Frances McDormand, in voiceover. "That's true," says Sean Penn, petulantly, in voiceover. "I also have a mild fear of dying."

Now, not in voiceover, Frances McDormand says to him, "You can't die until you sell off those Tesco shares." Sean Penn, staring at his feet, gives a little laugh. She gives a little laugh back. "What will you do while I'm away?" he asks, still shoegazing. "The usual things," she replies. "Take it easy on the tai chi," he tells her, turning to face her at last. They kiss, and he pats her shoulder awkwardly.

"Jane, can I ask you something?" he says. "Sure, honey, what?" she says. "Why did you let an architect write 'cuisine' on the kitchen wall? It's silly—I know it's the kitchen." The nonsequiturial asking of this question in an innocently perplexed tone is almost certainly intended to be whimsically idiosyncratic, but Sean Penn misses the mark by a country mile and comes across less "charming eccentric" than "creepy man-child."

Frances McDormand smiles, like the mother of a child who just asked an adorably precocious question, or Dr. X having his heartstrings tugged by a child begging him not to blow up the earth. She reaches out and smooths his hair, chuckling. "Please come back to me soon. You know I can't live without you." She zips up his back hoodie. "That's not true," he says, "but it's kind of you to say."

The camera pulls up and back, revealing that they are standing at the edge of an empty inground pool, at the bottom of which lies a dog wearing a chew-prevention collar.

So, here's the thing: We're clearly meant to receive this character as some sort of known archetype, as if there are loads of pale-faced, smeared make-up, fuck-coiffed, dark-haired, dark-dressed, soft-spoken, happily married aging goth rockers wandering about the countryside of the British Isles, but NO THERE AREN'T. There is only Robert Smith.

(And if there are any others, they're nicking Bob's shtick, too.)

Listen, makers of This Must Be the Place: Don't ape an icon and expect me to pretend that it's a classic archetype peeing on my leg!

This looks like the sort of film I'd really enjoy if Sean Penn weren't in it.

The Rapture Is Coming! (Again!) This Time for Real! (Again!) Math Is Hard! (Again!)

Harold Camping, the opportunistic thunderfuck who has twice predicted the Rapture to resounding failure, now says he got the date wrong. (Which is the same thing he said the last time he whoopsed the Rapture.)

A California preacher who foretold of the world's end only to see the appointed day pass with no extraordinarily cataclysmic event has revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21.

Harold Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven Saturday before catastrophe struck the planet, apologized Monday evening for not having the dates "worked out as accurately as I could have."

Okay, player.

The GOP Appalls Anew

[Trigger warning for sexual violence; misogyny.]

Just when you think elected members of the Republican Party could not get any more contemptible, along comes Kansas State Representative Pete DeGraaf to lower the bar even further: After the Republican majority in the state legislature passed a bill banning insurance companies from covering abortion under general health plans, DeGraaf's colleague State Representative Barbara Bollier expressed concern that her party might be creating insurmountable barriers for women who want to terminate unintended pregnancies.

During the House debate, she "questioned whether women would buy abortion-only policies long before they have crisis or unwanted pregnancies or are rape victims."

But state Rep. Pete DeGraaf (R) was ready with a shocking retort. DeGraaf said women should plan ahead for situations such as rape because, after all, "I have a spare tire on my car":

During the House's debate, Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told [Bollier]: "We do need to plan ahead, don't we, in life?"

Bollier asked him, "And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?"

DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, "I have spare tire on my car."

"I also have life insurance," he added. "I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for."
DeGraaf's belief that women should plan and prepare for their own rape is more than groan-worthy, it's woefully out-of-touch. As Jezebel's Margaret Hartmann notes, DeGraaf is basically telling sexual assault victims that "the state isn't AAA" so a Kansas woman is responsible for the consequences of her attacker. And by comparing it to life insurance, DeGraaf goes further to insinuate that rape is as inevitable as death.

And not just that rape is as inevitable as death, but that he finds the allegedly ineludible nature of rape to be an acceptable situation.

And why wouldn't he, really? If rape is as certain as death and taxes, then he's got no responsibility in its prevention (although, I'll bet he's spent some time on behalf of tax prevention, ahem), nor need to abstain from engaging in vile rape culture narratives like rape is natural and inescapable.

Or, ya know, like rape is no more serious than a flat tire.

Rep. Pete DeGraaf's office can be contacted here.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Blondie: "Mother"

That's A Big Tent

[Trigger Warning: Racism]

Stay classy, FOX.

Chugging 40's.

All together now, "This has nothing to do with race; stop playing the race card!"

Today in Fat Hatred

[Trigger warning for fat hatred, eliminationism, body policing.]

In case anyone was still under the impression that fat hatred in this country is not explicitly eliminationist, Shaker NobleExperiments sends along this article which reports: "According to South Florida's Sun Sentinel, 15 of 105 OB/GYN practices in the area have created weight limits for new patients starting at 200 pounds." The author notes that "having to shed pounds to get an appointment with a gynecologist is preposterous," but it is not merely preposterous: To deny potentially life-saving healthcare, like routine cancer screening, to women because they are fat will literally condemn some of them to death.

Fifteen out of 105 might not seem like a huge number, but, in the US, a country without socialized medicine, you're shit outta luck if your health insurance provider's in-network docs fall in that fat-hating fifteen (unless you can afford to pay out-of-pocket for healthcare). There is, for example, exactly one in-network OB/GYN in my town to which I can go. The next closest is a half-hour drive away.

Meanwhile, Shaker InfamousQBert forwards this story about a British doctor who "gives overweight moms-to-be diabetes drug to slim their unborn babies." Awesome. Great idea, I'm sure.

In better fat-related news, Shaker Kim forwards this piece by Lesley Kinzel about the power of saying no. Which is not only true like a true thing with lots of little true bits all over it, but also underlines once again how the concepts of consent, autonomy, respect, and dignity run through every flavor of social justice in inextricable ways.