The US Department of Transportation's "Expanded Airline Passenger Protections" went into effect yesterday (except for the parts that won't go into effect until next year): "The new consumer protections, finalized earlier this year, include requirements that airlines refund baggage fees if bags are lost, increase compensation provided to passengers bumped from oversold flights, and provide passengers greater protections from lengthy tarmac delays."
I am pleased with any guidelines that require increased corporate responsibility, although I would frankly have been more impressed with a passenger bill of rights that banned "enhanced pat-downs," which are not remotely an effective tool against terrorism, and required airlines to treat fat passengers like human beings.
Not for nothing, but more people might fly (see: $$$$$) if they weren't worried about being sexually violated or randomly required to purchase a second seat they can't afford.
Passenger Bill of Rights Takes Effect
Hey, Here Is Our Commenting Policy! You Should Read It! Whooooops Some People Haven't Read It!
Required Reading Before Commenting: Everything in the Feminism 101 section, all links below, and "My Vote. Mine." Please also familiarize yourself with Shakesville's Email Policy.
Culture: This is an advanced feminist space. We don't do newbie education on demand here, and we don't do flamewars with people who treat discussion of progressive feminist ideals as an abstract academic exercise or want to play "devil's advocate." If you have a question, ask it in the daily Open Thread, with the hope but not expectation that someone will be around who has the time and inclination to answer it and engage in discussion with you.
Short Rules: Be nice. Be thoughtful. Be open to correction in response to unintentional expressions of privilege. Respect the mods. Hold yourself to the same standards you hold the contributors and other commenters. Have fun. And expect to get whatever you give: If you respect the guidelines and the community culture, you'll get the same in return.
Long Rules: Comments are open to anyone as long as they don't troll and/or traffic in racist, sexist, homophobic, trans*phobic, ableist, ageist, sizeist, or otherwise overtly objectionable commentary based on people's intrinsic characteristics. Differences of opinion are welcome; no one has ever been nor will ever be banned on a difference of opinion alone. Hate speech, slurs, rape apologia, rape jokes and metaphors, violent imagery and rhetoric, threats, trolling, concern trolling, derailing, playing the Oppression Olympics, pointless belligerence, sockpuppeting, silencing tactics, accusations of bad faith, disrespecting the mods, including ignoring them, telling contributors what they should be writing about or how they should be writing about it, and/or invoking the [TW] blogmistress' personal experience to use against her, or doing the same to any of the contributors, mods, or other commenters, could result in any of the following: Your comment edited to remove offending material, your comment replaced with an incredibly sophomoric paraphrase, your comment deleted, and/or your commenting privileges revoked.
Being banned from Shakesville is not an invitation to take your issues to the email inbox of Liss and/or any of the other contributors or mods.
Whether you can comment at Shakesville is ultimately at our discretion—and plaintive, angry, or accusatory wailing about free speech will be met with yawning indifference. This isn't a public square. This is a safe space.
This blog is meant to be a refuge from the entire rest of the world where people who deviate in some way from arbitrary norms are ridiculed, marginalized, turned into punchlines, silenced, targeted, treated as less than, made to feel not good enough, put at real risk of physical harm, and denied rights, opportunities, access, equal pay, friendships, votes, equality.
We're all going to make mistakes occasionally—and for that, we need to make allowances. Everyone trips up now and then, even with the best of intentions, which is why we are resolved to endeavor always to be aware of our privilege, and, in moments of failure, remain open to criticisms and suggestions, think twice before responding defensively, and apologize when we fuck up.
We also expect the same of those who want membership in the community—which includes calling out others' mistakes in a productive and considered way, because no one is expected to be perfect. Everyone is expected to be willing to self-examine and learn, and therefore everyone must be willing to provide the space, the room to breathe, in which that reflection and growth can happen. A failure to support the provision of room to fail is a failure to respect the rules of the safe space.
And everyone is expected to respect the rules.
If you take issue with a blogmistress who wants her teensy weensy part of the world to be a sanctuary from the oppressions of the kyriarchy, if you feel that impinges on your freedoms, then off you go. You've got an entire world waiting who won't hold you to the same standard.
We expect more.
You Know What They Say About Assuming...
[Trigger warning for heterocentrism.]
So there's this article at CNN about how parents can talk to their kids about same-sex relationships, which, as an aside, is prominently linked from the front page of the site with "When kids ask same-sex questions."
You didn't even KNOW there were same-sex questions, did you? Neither did Rep. Michele Bachmann, but she will be introducing a Federal Question Amendment to ban same-sex questions and protect the sanctity of straight questions as soon as Congress is back in session.
Anyway!
The thing that strikes me about the article is how, even though the author acknowledges that parents' prejudices tend to unnecessarily complicate conversations about why a classmate has two moms or whether two men can get married, she seems utterly unaware of the heterocentrism embedded in writing an article for "parents" about how to talk to their kids about "nontraditional families."
Without any qualifier like "straight parents," the author sets up "parents" and "nontraditional families" as mutually exclusive groups. She assumes that she's talking to straight parents, and thus is her language exclusionary of the precise parents about whom she doesn't know how to talk to her kids. (Huh!)
And then there's this: Throughout the article runs a theme of parents who want to teach their kids tolerance, but nary a mention of the possibility that parents might be talking to kids who will themselves be in a same-sex relationship someday. There is an implicit assumption that the children to whom "parents" are speaking are also straight, and just need a functional explanation to understand same-sex relationships as something that exist in the world, though many children will actually be introduced to an understanding of who they are during early conversations about same-sex relationships.
Not making assumptions about sexuality is an important lesson for kids to learn, irrespective of their own sexuality.
In any case, with about 12% of the US now living in a place where same-sex marriage is legal, and more states soon to follow, it doesn't seem like a response to a question about same-sex marriage need make for a "complicated ride home" in the car.
"Yes, boys can marry boys, too," is easy enough. And factually correct.
Question of the Day
What activity do you only enjoy as a solitary pursuit?
For me, the answer hands-down is reading. I can't stand to read around anyone else, because I inevitably get interrupted, which annoys me to no end. Even other readers are frequently terrible about interrupting someone who's reading: Iain reads more than anyone I've ever met, and he is also the WORST at interrupting me when I'm reading, lol, which I find exasperating and endearing in equal measure.
Stormy Weather
Because NW Indiana has been relocated to the tropics during monsoon season care of climate change, we're fixing to have another ginormous thunderstorm here. I'm shutting down the computer and will likely lose power because James Franco Mitch Daniels.
I'll be back as soon as I can...
Quote of the Day
"Now normally, investors accept the unknowability of bank equity because they have some faith in the system. Does anyone have any confidence in the system now? Financial regulators have shown themselves to be incompetent and/or badly captured by banks. Earth to base: letting off bank management easy is bad for investors in the long run. Being an investor in an overly risky bank looks swell until it suddenly isn't."—Yves Smith, in a must-read piece about the tanking of Bank of America's stock, which is, as Henry Blodget bluntly writes here, "stoking fears that Bank of America will go bust, taking the whole economy down with it."
Gee, it's almost like the government should have DONE SOMETHING after the last panicky bailout, instead of letting the banks go right back to doing what they were doing before, without regulation or consequence.
What is it they say about those who refuse to learn from history...?
Daily Dose of Cute
[Dudley and Zelda sit together on the loveseat. Zelda is chewing on a squeaky toy and Dudley is staring off into space.] Dudley! *kissy noises* [Dudley turns and looks at me] What are you doing? What's going on over there? [His ears perk up; Zelda stops and looks at me.] Ohhhh, are you good puppies? [They stare at me cutely.] Are you the good puppies? You are. Yes. [Zelda goes back to her squeaky toy.] The good puppies. [Dudley lays his head down contentedly.]Immediately following this exchange, Dudley grabbed the other end of the toy, and thus did commence a brief but furious game of doggy wrasslin'.
Still photos of the good puppies are below the fold (on most browsers)...
EARS!
TONGUE!
Earthquake on the US East Coast
There was just a big earthquake on the East Cost of the US. CNN's Breaking News banner reads: "Magnitude 5.8 earthquake shakes Virginia, D.C., and New York."
Deeky reports: "USGS says it was here: 37.875°N, 77.908°W. about 30 miles NW of Richmond."
The easterly contributors and mods are all okay.
Did you feel it? Everyone all right?
Whoa
Northwestern researchers report breakthrough in ALS research:
The apparent discovery of a common cause of all forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — the fatal disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease — could give a boost to efforts to find a treatment for the fatal neurodegenerative disease, a new study by Northwestern University researchers contends.Amazing news, that.
Scientists have long struggled to identify the underlying disease process of ALS and weren't even sure that a common disease process was associated with all forms of ALS.
In this new study, Northwestern researchers said they found that the basis of ALS [in all three types of ALS: hereditary, sporadic and ALS that targets the brain] is a malfunctioning protein recycling system in the neurons of the brain and spinal cord.
...The discovery, published Aug. 21 in the journal Nature, shows that all forms of ALS share an underlying cause and offers a common target for drug therapy, according to the researchers.
[H/T to @PeterDaou.]
LOL Ricky Gervais Is Such an Asshole
[Trigger warning for violent imagery, including imagery of implied self-harm.]
So, awhile ago, Ricky Gervais submitted two absolutely ridiculous pictures to Rolling Stone for their cover (neither of which they used) and wrote a stupid piece about them for Huffington Post. One of the images is of Gervais dressed like a clown and sticking a gun in his mouth, and the other is of Gervais posed like Jesus, with a microphone stand filling in as the cross, wearing (I cannot even type this without laughing uproariously) a crown of thorns and jeans, with "ATHEIST" written across his chest in faux blood. He is shirtless to show off his recent weight loss, natch.
Ricky Gervais: Sexy Martyr.
It's sooooooooooooo self-indulgent and so cringingly humorless. When I first saw it, I sent it to Deeks and Spudsy and we had a good laugh (for all the wrong reasons), but I didn't think it was particularly worth a post, because who could take that shit seriously?
Well, it turns out New Humanist magazine can, and has decided to use the picture on the cover of their latest issue.
LOL FOREVER
"You have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend you." Ooooh, what a brave teller of rape jokes and trailblazing social commentator whose "edgy" comedy consists of sneering misogyny, fat hatred, and classism. Way to stick it to The Man, Gervais. You're a real fucking hero.
Yes, Ricky Gervais has the right to offend me, but I am not offended. I am contemptuous.
I am contemptuous of anyone who uses humor to be a bully, who directs punchlines at the powerless to the further enrichment of the privileged. Comedy is a weapon, and no one knows that better than people who wield it professionally. Any professional comedian who says it doesn't matter in what direction that weapon gets pointed is full of shit.
Gervais, like most comedians, likes to dismiss his critics as humorless and/or oversensitive, but it is indicative of neither humorlessness nor oversensitivity to observe that some comedy upholds privilege and some comedy challenges it.
If Gervais wants to be an extremely privileged straight, cis, white, Western, wealthy, influential man who uses his sizable platform in service to his own privileges, that's his call. But he ought to at least have the integrity to own it.
"You have the right to assert your privilege, and I have the right to snort derisively."
Anyway! Back to that picture.
LOL OMFG THAT PICTURE!
I mean, listen, no one knows better than I do that there can be a real and substantial cost to being a public atheist, no less a public atheist who challenges Christian privilege. But that image is just colossally absurd. It's vain, and it's hyperbolic, and it's tedious. And it has nothing at all to do with the actual real-life consequences that atheists can face in their real lives: Job loss, alienation from family, ostracization from community, political and cultural marginalization, etc.
It's so grossly self-centered that all I can imagine what I look at it is that Gervais really does fancy himself some sort of savior, which I suspect was not the irony that was intended.
Blah blah I continue to be unimpressed with evangelical atheists.
State Funeral for Jack
In what I have to say is personally stunning news, our Prime Minister (S. Harper, CPC - Uncanny Valley) has offered Olivia Chow a state funeral for the late Jack Layton, her husband and the Leader of the Opposition NDP. She has accepted, and there will be a full state funeral on Saturday in Toronto (2pm, Roy Thompson Hall, open to the public), for which the PM and his wife will return from their tour of the Arctic areas of Canada. Mr. Layton will also be on Parliament Hill one last time, on Wednesday and Thursday, for scheduled visitations.
State funerals are automatically offered only for current and former PMs and governors-general, and sitting members of Cabinet, so this is an impressive honour being done.
There will also be books of condolence available at every NDP MP's constituency office, as well as Toronto City Hall and at Parliament Hill in Ottawa. For those who can't reach any of those places, there is an online book of condolence at the New Democratic Party's website (en français ici).
The family have asked that memorial donations be directed to the Broadbent Institute (premier lien en français, second is in English), a left-wing think tank named for the great Ed Broadbent, former NDP leader, and a good friend of Jack's.
Update: Shakers have been leaving comments here with details of their local observances, vigils and books of condolence. If you're looking for that info, or know of such events, please do go into the comments.
From the Department of No Doy
New York Times: No Surprise for Bisexual Men: Report Indicates They Exist.
Bisexuality—or sexuality generally, really—does not just come down exclusively to physical arousal, which itself, as Ellyn Ruthstrom, president of the Bisexual Resource Center in Boston, observes in the article, is "extraordinarily messy and multifactorial" outside the confines of a laboratory.
But okay: Now some study has basically proven bisexual men exist, for everyone for whom "I am a bisexual man" was inexplicably not good enough.
*confetti*
[H/T to Shaker TyphoidMary.]
Number of the Day
18.6: The percentage of female physicians who will provide abortions to their patients, nearly twice the percentage of male physicians (10.6%).
Gender, however, does not mark the biggest difference in whether a physician will perform an abortion, per the findings of the self-administered confidential survey which were published in Obstetrics and Gynecology. The biggest difference is religious affiliation:
* 40.2 percent of Jewish doctors say yes, compared withLikelihood of performing an abortion is inversely proportional to the privileging of one's religious views in the US. I'm not surprised; I'm contemptuous.
* 1.2 percent of Evangelical Protestants
* 9 percent of Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox
* 10.1 percent of Non-Evangelical Protestants
* 20 percent of Hindus
* 26.5 percent of doctors who said they had no religious affiliation
Our Broken Democracy, in One Headline
"Warren's criticism of Wall Street poses fundraising dilemma."
The "Warren" in the headline is Elizabeth Warren, who proposed the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but was not allowed to run it. (That job went to former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who is generally more amenable to the President's position on not actually protecting consumers.) Warren is now contemplating a Senate run in Massachusetts against Republican Scott Brown, who was "dubbed 'Wall Street's Favorite Congressman' in a Forbes article last year" and has been "stockpiling campaign cash in anticipation of a tight 2012 race."
But whence will Warren's campaign cash come? That's the "fundraising dilemma."
If Warren runs, she will have to decide whether to court high-rolling donors in the financial services community — an awkward choice both personally and politically, given her carefully crafted image as antagonist to big finance.Which, thanks to the Supreme Court, has the capacity to be more juggerynautery than ever.
"I think it's pretty clear she's going to run the classic, grassroots campaign here in Massachusetts," said Mary Anne Marsh, a longtime Democratic operative in the state. "That means she's going to rely on folks here to give low-dollar donations here a number of times."
But without the support of heavy-hitting donors in Massachusetts, many of whom work at hedge funds and other financial firms, Warren might find it difficult to keep up with Brown's fundraising juggernaut.
If you can't win without the financial backing of corporations, if there is even the reasonable assumption that you can't win without the financial backing of corporations, our democracy is functionally dead.
In other words, our democracy is functionally dead. RIP.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite song with a person's name in the title?
It's not my favorite, but Paper Lace's "Billy Don't Be a Hero" is (inexplicably) stuck in my head at the moment. Hence the question.
RIP Fairness Doctine
As promised in June, the FCC has officially killed the Fairness Doctrine:
The FCC gave the coup de grace to the fairness doctrine Monday as the commission axed more than 80 media industry rules.Unnecessary regulations LOL FOREVER.
Earlier this summer FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski agreed to erase the post WWII-era rule, but the action Monday puts the last nail into the coffin for the regulation that sought to ensure discussion over the airwaves of controversial issues did not exclude any particular point of view. A broadcaster that violated the rule risked losing its license.
While the commission voted in 1987 to do away with the rule — a legacy to a time when broadcasting was a much more dominant voice than it is today — the language implementing it was never removed. The move Monday, once published in the federal register, effectively erases the rule.
Monday's move is part of the commission's response to a White House executive order directing a "government-wide review of regulations already on the books" designed to eliminate unnecessary regulations.
Wanna hear something funny? Many, many times during the Bush administration, I wrote about how great it would be if that long national nightmare, which so glaringly highlighted the inherent problems with media deregulation and the failure to enforce the Fairness Doctrine, was succeeded by a Democratic presidency during which the president would advocate for reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.
Instead, the Fairness Doctrine has been relegated out of existence, no less while rightwing media mogul Rupert Murdoch is under investigation for criminally unethical journalism.
Awesome.
St. Ronnie would be so very proud of you, President Obama.
