[Content Note: Rape culture; clergy abuse; Christian Supremacy.]
"SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church. ... I can't give you the names, but there's a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don't need altar boys. The church has been too quick to write a check, and I think they've realized it would be a lot less expensive in the long run if we fought them one by one."—Bill Donohue, the one-man "Catholic League" whom the media continues to treat as if he represents anyone but himself, on how the Catholic Church should get tough with SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Yep, that's right. Bill Donohue actually just said the Catholic Church should fight survivors of rape one by one. Ya know, to save money.
True Fact: Bill Donohue once called me a "brat" on national television. He's GREAT!
Quote of the Day
BushQuotes!
Chapter 1, page 1: "Most lives have defining moments. Moments that forever change you. Moments that set you on a different course. Moments of recognition so vivid and so clear that everything later seems different."
Moments when you realize how easily a book could be dropped behind a couch. Or into a garbage can.
Shakers, that is how this book opens. We are in for a long and terrible ride.
Daily Dose of Cute
The dogs are so happy to have some warmth and sunshine! They just want to be outside all day, and who can blame them—it's a gorgeous day. I've never known a dog who loves lying in the sun as much as Dudley.
Zelly, of course, is just content to sit there grinning, as per usual. Happiest dog on the planet.
Community Reminders
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2. The best way to send tips if you'd like me, or another contributor, to write about something is to email me. If you are unable to send an email, please don't leave tips in any old thread. There is an Open Thread provided every day, and tips should be left there to avoid derailing other threads.
Also: If you are leaving a heads-up about a story that contains potentially triggering subject matter, please be sure to include a content note. It's difficult to write about something by which one has been triggered, even if it's normally something about which we'd write, so trying to get something in our faces in a provocative way is actually counterproductive if you want a thread on it.
3. Arguing with the moderators about moderation is a violation of the commenting policy.
4. Please remember that you are not commenting into a void. You are responding to posts that have been thoughtfully authored by actual people, who are often writing about their actual lived experiences.
You are also one of thousands of commenters, as well as readers who contact us via email. Your one passive-aggressive insult, your one pedantic nitpick with embedded judgment, your one accusation of bad faith because, hey, you're having a bad day, your one assertion that the rules don't apply to you, surely, since you're a long-time reader, your one demand that we explain an easily googlable fact for you, your one request we fix your comment for formatting or the addition of a content note or removal of inappropriate language, your one request we do more work, or work on demand, or do something differently because the way we do it isn't the way you would, your one "to be fair" when no one was being unfair, your one "I don't always agree with everything here, but" as if anyone does or expects everyone to, your one "I'll probably get killed for this, but" as if disagreement is disallowed in this space, your one mischaracterization as "disagreement" that which is actually bad faith or some other violation of the commenting policy, or any other variation on the above is not just one, but is, in fact, ALSO one of thousands.
And your "joke" disguised as a criticism of our writing, your "fixed that for you!" with our carefully chosen words crossed out and replaced to make a cheap "joke" at the expense of our hard work, your "you forgot" that turns your desire to add something into our failure to include what you want to see in our work, and all the other little frustratingly common rhetorical devices ubiquitously used in internet commenting that devalues the writing of the people whose work creates the very spaces in which you demean it to make jokes or score points, are also, each, just one of thousands.
Please remember that you are not commenting into a void. Comments are, especially in a community like this, a conversation between writer and reader, at least in part. We like being a group that participates in comments with our readership, but it's difficult when there is a lot of casual cruelty, unreasonable demands, and unnecessary nitpicking.
If I get my facts wrong, if I need to be alerted to a typo or a broken link or some other mistake, cool. I appreciate that. But I don't need to hear how I'm Doing It Wrong, where "wrong" equals some value of "differently than you would like," and how I need to do more, and more, and more. And then how I need to use a nicer tone when I say no.
We are held to extraordinary standards here, and that's awesome. We will keep trying to live up to them (and keep failing, no doubt). There is, however, a difference between expecting us to generally succeed and encouraging us to always do better, which is a gift, and expecting us to be perfect, and be 50,000 competing and often conflicting versions of perfect, at that, which is a nightmare.
Thank you, and carry on.
Today in Your Feminist Backlash
[Content Note: Reproductive rights; misogyny.]
1. A six-day arc in the long-running comic strip "Doonesbury," which follows a woman getting an abortion, is being relocated from the LA Times' comics page to the op-ed page.
In the strips, a young woman at an abortion clinic is chastised by a male legislator who calls her a "slut," and a doctor rebukes her by reading a scripted greeting from Texas Gov. Rick Perry in advance of her "compulsory transvaginal exam." While awaiting the exam, the woman is placed in a "shaming room."I'm pretty sure pro-choice female readers are already well aware of the legislation being passed to curb the bodily autonomy of women et. al., and literally cannot escape (short of leaving the country) the campaign of violent misogyny being waged from every statehouse and virtually every source of mainstream media, so basically the Times is worried about offending the delicate sensibilities of their anti-choice and/or cis male readership. What a terrible thing it would be if they had A MOMENT OF DISCOMFORT WHILE READING THE FUNNY PAGES while people with uteri are rendered property of the state inch by fucking inch!
"We felt the story line was a little over the top for a comics page," said Alice Short, a Times assistant managing editor.
2. A Georgia legislator (GUESS WHAT PARTY! GO AHEAD AND JUST GUESS!), who just coincidentally happens to be a dude, gave a speech in support of HB 954, "which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term," in which he "compared women seeking abortions of stillborn fetuses to cows and pigs. ... He then delivered an anecdote to the chamber in which a young man who was apparently opposed to legislation outlawing chicken fighting said he would give up all of his chickens if the legislature simply took away women's right to an abortion." GREAT STORY!
3. Via Maria at 2 Political Junkies, here is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Women in the World Summit, having to, in the year two thousand and fucking twelve, talk about how extremists still want to control women and the most basic aspects of our lives:
Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim—they all want to control women. They want to control how we dress; they want to control how we act; they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe, but even here at home, we have to stand up for women's rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us because America needs to set an example for the entire world.Not for nothing, but it's hard for America to "set an example for the entire world" when its leader won't even give this idea the most cursory lip service.
You know, I genuinely don't like playing the What If Alternate Universe game about a Hillary Clinton presidency, because it's usually a waste of goddamn time. No one can know for certain what her presidency would have looked like, and, particularly in the foreign policy arena, it probably would have looked frustratingly the same.
But there is one thing I know as well as I know my own fucking name, and that is this: There is no way in hell that President Hillary Clinton would have remained silent while Republicans waged a war on women.
The Walking Thread
[Content Note: Gun violence; self-harm.]
"Here, Carl—take this gun and shoot me with it, then shoot everyone
else with it, then dip it in gold and give it to Frank Darabont."
(Spoilers lurch undeadly herein.)
Ugh, this show. UGH. Once again, the part of my critique of this week's episode will be played by an excerpt from Deeky's and my text conversation had whilst watching the final climactic scene (or what settles for climactic in this show):
Primarily Dreadful
Today is Primary Day in Hawaii, Alabama, and Mississippi—or, as Republicans think of it, Primary Day in Alabama and Mississippi—so Mitt Romney, aka Mr. South, is bringing out the BIG GUNS, i.e. Jeff Foxworthy, i.e. another famous rich privileged dude whose job it is to convince poor white bigots that he is JUST LIKE THEM so they should definitely like him and, more importantly, GIVE HIM MONEY.
All of Mitt Romney's losing to Barack Obama aspirations rest on winning Alabama and Mississippi, which is the only way he can definitively prove that being a wealthy Yankee Mormon corporate raider is no impediment to appealing to impoverished, protestant, Southern white straight men who are looking for scapegoats on whom to blame the undelivered promises of a kyriarchy that assured them American Dominion was their birthright.
It's pretty AMAZING that Mitt Romney, who is a TERRIBLE campaigner and would make a DISASTROUS president but is truly a PERFECT flesh-and-blood symbol of everything that should rightly be held accountable for the ruination of the working and middle classes and for turning "the American Dream" into a punchline, is now inches away from becoming the Republican nominee, thus inviting poor white Southerners to vote more explicitly than ever before for an emblem of their own destruction. NEAT! What a neat party the Republicans are!
I hope in the next election, the Republican ticket is just a tattered safety net and a holographic bootstrap.
The Goat|Paperclip ticket is going to have a run for its money!
ANYWAY! Back to the 2012 election... Did you know that Rick Santorum won the Kansas caucuses on Saturday? Well he did! BY A LOT! He is very popular in Kansas with Republican primary voters! Whooooooops Kansas! Your Republican primary voters are very fond of Rick Santorum! Yuck!
In good news, Mitch Daniels is not your governor! So there's that.
What else? Blah blah Romney needs to seal the deal in Dixie. (Everything about that sentence is gross.) But Newt Gingrich might steal the deal! Oh noes! That would be so sad for Mitt Romney, but obviously SO GREAT FOR US since it would make this interminable primary EVEN LONGER!!!
Rick Santorum understands basic math. Mitt Romney is unpopular and also a liar. Newt Gingrich is still a human being running for president in the USA. And something something Ron Paul.
Also! President Obama's approval rating is falling. But he's also recapturing demographic groups won by the GOP in the 2010 midterm election. WHICH IS IT? Who cares. If Obama wanted to win in a landslide, he should have tried governing in a way that wildly distinguished him from the other party. OH WELL TOO LATE NOW!
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Aphra's Reading Room: Women's History Month Edition, Part II
(This is the second in a series of four posts recommending books and films on the history of women, gender, sexuality, feminism, and related topics. This series is in honor of the U.S. commemoration of Women's History Month. For background, you can read the first post here.)
Welcome to the second installment! You are hereby invited to commit the deeply feminist act of looking at history from women's points of view. These lists are necessarily limited by my own areas of teaching and research; they are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to help start some conversations about women's history. You're invited to share your own recommendations in comments.
If you have been doing some great reading (or viewing) in women's history, this is your chance to share! If you've been thinking you'd like to learn more about women's history, these posts should give you some ideas!
Part II: Early Modern Era (c. 1450 - c.1800 CE)
Book: The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal, by Afua Cooper. This is a wide-ranging book that re-traces the life of Angelique, an African woman trapped in the Atlantic slave system and who may or may not have been guilty of arson. The author uses legal records to reconstruct Angelique's voice, and situates her in the wider context of colonial Montreal and a slave system that shackled both African and Native persons. Although it's an academic work, it reads like popular history.
Book: Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society, by Yossef Rapoport. I love this study, which challenges much of the historiography about divorce by rejecting Western frameworks that assume divorce has been rare until recently. Not only was divorce relatively accessible for 15th century Muslims, the author makes a compelling argument that Muslim women were far from powerless as they navigated the laws that governed divorce.
Book: Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History, edited by Anne Walthall. This collection of essays ranges from Asia to the Americas to Europe, considering women's roles in royal politics. Essays cover courtesans, wives, mothers, and a very wide range of women. Rather than being a sign of corruption or a political aberration, this book paints' women's "intrigues" as a normal part of many different political systems.
DVD: American Experience - A Midwife's Tale. This installment of PBS' American Experience uncovers the story of Martha Ballard, a late 18th century midwife living in frontier Maine. Not only is Martha's story revealed, the program also follows historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who uncovered Martha via her diary. This, this is not only an interesting piece about 18th century daily life, it provides insight into how historians can piece together women's stories from the limited evidence they leave behind.
Book: Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, by Allan Greer. Partially blinded and scarred by smallpox at a young age, Kateri Tekakwitha might have died an unknown outcast. Yet her remarkable Christian piety, demonstrated through extreme acts of self-denial, won her admiration in the mixed-race Christian community of New France. By the time of her death at age 24, she had already convinced missionary Jesuits that she was destined for sainthood. A woman between two worlds, her story, and that of the Jesuits who burnished her saintly reputation, is a fascinating look at the blending of communities in colonial North America.
Book: Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman---and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-Century America, by Alan Pell Crawford. This is a gripping work of popular history that is both easy and difficult to read. Easy, because the story is absorbing: 18 year old Nancy Randolph of Virgina is accused of committing adultery with her own brother-in-law, and of murdering their infant child. The resulting scandal provokes a trial involving such great legal minds as Patrick Henry and future justice John Marshall. Thomas Jefferson also plays a prominent role in Nancy's life. Yet this is simultaneously a difficult book, throwing a light onto the ways that even enormously privileged women were vulnerability in the U.S. Early National era.
Book: The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern, by Carla Hesse. There's a tendency among popular histories treatments of the Enlightenment to focus primarily on its effects upon men, with perhaps a mention of Mary Wollstonecraft for "balance." This book, on the other hand, takes a serious and sustained look at the way the French Revolution shaped women's writing and intellectual lives.
Book: Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier, by Alfred F. Young. Disguised as "Robert Shurtleff," schoolteacher Deborah Sampson enlisted in George Washington's continental forces, living and fighting as a man; after the war, she married and, hard up for cash, took to the stage to perform military exercises as a woman. Although she left few records behind, Young teases out her story using family sources and other inaccessible records. This is as complete a biography of Sampson as we are likely to get, and it's a good one.
Book: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England, by Carol Karlsen. I could do an entire reading list on witchcraft trials (perhaps for a future Reading Room!) but if you read only one book on the topic, this is a good one. Karlsen was the first scholar to extensively consider the role of gender in New England witchcraft trials, and she makes a compelling argument that concerns about gender and property played a very important role in the trials. She considers not only Salem, but a wide range of New England witchcraft trials and helpfully distinguishes between garden-variety accusations and outbreaks of panic.
Book: Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric, by Veronica Buckley. One of the most famous Catholic converts of her era, Christina gave up the throne of Sweden and lived a highly unusual life of adventure and pleasure. Hardly a feminist, Christina viewed women with disdain, and provides an excellent example of the Exceptional Woman. I wish the author had centered Christina's conflicted gender and sexuality a bit more; she frequently dressed in masculine clothing and took both male and female lovers. However, the book is overall a thoroughly intriguing portrait of a very interesting personality.
Book: The Secret Life of Aphra Behn, by Janet Todd. I couldn't resist! Todd painstakingly recreates the life of the 17th century propagandist, playwright, and spy in this biography, the most complete to date.
Coming up: Part III: Nineteenth Century CE; Part IV: 20th Century CE
[Commenting Note: In addition to our usual commenting standards, I ask that we be respectful of others' experiences in discovering women's history. A work that is helpful to one person may have its flaws, and it's fine to talk about that. If nothing else, research does get out dated. But please respect that this work was important to the commenter for a reason. Also please note that while not every recommendation must be flawless by social justice standards, works in which anti-trans*, heterocentrist, racist, and/or other marginalizing material are central are not welcome.]
Number of the Day
140: The number of advertisers Rush Limbaugh has now lost. Whooooooooooops! It looks like the market has spoken, Rush Limbaugh, and it says, "Hey, I just noticed Rush Limbaugh is kind of a vile garbage monster! Geez, it sure TOOK ME A LONG TIME, huh?!"
Anyway, in addition to/because of losing like 300% of its advertisers, the show is also having syndication issues:
Radio-Info.com reports that Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to affiliates in exchange for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads are called "barter spots." These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.I can't wait for Limbaugh's shameful slink from the airwaves in disgrace and his eventual triumphant return.
But without explanation, Premiere has suspended these national advertisements for two weeks. Radio-Info.com calls the move "unusual." The development suggests that Rush Limbaugh's incessant sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke have caused severe damage to the show.
"The millions of dollars make it less humiliating than you'd think!"—Don Imus.
Sign the Petition for a Personhood Amendment for Women and Other People with Uteri
[Click the image, or click here, to sign.]
More information on the Personhood Amendment for People with Uteri is here.
Thanks so much to everyone who's signed the petition, and to everyone who's promoted it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. KEEP UP THE VOLUME! We're now over 3,000 signatures, and we want to get to 5,000 this week! Let's do it! Teaspoons ahoy!
Open Thread
Hosted by PB Max.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by food that no longer exists.
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!
[Click the image, or click here, to sign.]
More information on the Personhood Amendment for People with Uteri is here.
Quote of the Day
"Faith plus family equals freedom."—Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, famous for trying to legislate his faith in order to undermine nontraditional families. Said, presumably, without a trace of fucking irony.
Project Runway All-Stars: Open Thread
This man is EXACTLY THE RIGHT AMOUNT of fluttery!
Well, this has certainly been an interesting season, hasn't it? Without giving any spoilers away, I can't say I agree with the judges' decision about who deserved to be in the final three, but oh well.
The After the Runway shows have been strangely enlightening, too. Austin has proven himself to be exactly as kind and professional and witty as he's always seemed, while Mondo seems a good deal less nice than he appears on the show, and Kenley seems a bit nicer.
I didn't like Mondo's sniping at Austin—"He's too fluttery for me"—especially the tone it took, which seemed, well, homophobic and misogynistic. I think it's only because Mondo feels threatened by Austin, who's definitely his strongest competitor, but still. That was yucky. Austin, by comparison, was gracious, even noting that Mondo was self-deprecating in a charming and "adorable" way.
The gap between where they are in their careers was evident in those exchanges. Austin appears to have reached that place where he's not threatened, where he knows that he can only do what he can do, and there's no reason to worry about what anyone else is doing or indulge petty jealousies. Mondo isn't quite there yet. In time.
Anyway! What did you think? I want one of Austin's coats in EVERY COLOR!
