Calamitous, people. CALAMITOUS.
How's This for an Endorsement?
[Former President Bill Clinton] praised President Barack Obama, saying that "the alternative would be in my opinion calamitous for our country and the world".LOL! Calamitous. Awesome.
The former President also noted that the current President "has a pretty good Secretary of State, too," to laughter and applause.
Wisconsin Recall Open Thread
"I'm a jerk!"
So today is The Big Day! In Wisconsin, voters will head to the polls to decide whether Republican Governor Scott Walker is recalled after less than two years in office, following his decision to rescind collective bargaining rights from most public employees, or whether his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, will assume the governorship.
What a fun political system we have!
Consider this your Open Thread for all Wisconsin Recall related stuff today. Please feel welcome and encouraged to drop in links to good stuff you're reading.
Question of the Day
[Content Note: Eating.]
What's your favorite snack?
OMG baby carrots. Sweet and crunchy. I generally eat them plain, but, if I want to make them more meal than snack, I will dip them in hummus or peanut butter. Drool.
[Commenting Note: "I don't snack," is a legitimate reply, but policing other people's choices (including whether they snack, or on what they choose to snack) is not welcome. Keep it judgment-free. Thanks!]
An Observation
We might get more authentically feminist films if nearly the entirety of the film industry didn't mistake the "exceptional woman" trope for a feminist narrative.
Number of the Day
One: How many fewer houses Mitt Romney has than John Kerry, according to Mitt Romney.
Video Description: Mitt Romney, in a split-screen interview on Fox News with Neil Cavuto laughs and says, "Well, I was asked today how many homes I had, and I said, 'Well, I have one less than John Kerry.' Didn't seem to bother the Democrats when they had him." Cavuto and Romney laugh.
* * *
I'm not sure how many houses John Kerry had when he was running (or how many he has now, for that matter), or how that compares to the number of houses Mitt Romney has. I do know for sure that John Kerry does not own a gold-plated moon mansion. I cannot say the same for Mitt Romney.
But it's a moot point: Those homes were not purchased by millions John Kerry made as a corporate raider; they were purchased by the inherited wealth of his wife Teresa Heinz. There's no equivalence.
So, yes, Mitt Romney: Democrats weren't bothered that John Kerry had X number of homes when he was the Democratic nominee, because Democrats don't disappear women and their autonomy to make stupid, mendacious points.
[H/T to @BuzzFeedAndrew.]
BushQuotes!
[Content Note: Racism.]
Chapter 4, page 48-49:
The next year brought big changes. The events of 1968 rocked our previously placid world and shocked the country, Yale, and me. In many ways that spring was the end of an era of innocence. The gravity of history was beginning to descend in a horrifying and disruptive way.Let us all raise our tiny violins and play the Yale fight song in a minor key to mourn the lost carefree days of the most privileged people in the country.
...I was shocked by the Reverend King's assassination and stunned by the violence. I watched, appalled, as racial riots escalated across the country. Militant groups such as the Black Panthers argued that the Reverend King's assassination also put to death the notion that civil rights could be achieved in a non-violent way. I disagreed and hoped America could remedy civil wrongs in a peaceful way.
Television brought vividly to life the discrimination that existed in many parts of America. I was horrified, as I watched the snarling dogs and billy clubs directed at America's own citizens. It was hard for me to imagine a society that would treat my friends as harshly and unjustly as what I saw on television. I was the president of our fraternity; the vice president, Paul Jones, was an African-American. So were my good friends Calvin Hill and Roy Austin. Ours was an easy, natural friendship. I was reared by parents who taught me to respect others. I had been taught, and I believed, that all people are equal, that we are children of a loving God who cares about the quality of our hearts, not the color of our skin. I was surprised by the depth of the racial hatred I saw on television. Although I came from the South, that was never the attitude at my house. As a very young boy, I had once repeated a racial slur I heard at school; my mother washed my mouth out with soap, and delivered such a stern lecture that I knew immediately I had done something very wrong. I remember my dad teaching us that every individual mattered and that each individual had a shot at the American dream... [This paragraph goes on for a million years.]
...We were young men trying to enjoy what should have been the last carefree days of youth. But we could no longer be the same cavalier college students.
Everything about this passage is infuriating—the talking about "America" and people of color as mutually exclusive groups; the privilege thick as pigshit that allows him to talk about violent discrimination as "shocking" and a cruel truncator of what "should have been the last carefree days of youth," without even a hint of awareness that young people of color had no such privilege; the temerity of his haughty "disagreement" with the Black Panthers; his "I totes have black friends" shtick; the sickeningly familiar assertion of white people that disallowing racial slurs in their home is evidence of their lack of racism, never mind the void of actual people of color in their homes. Et cetera.
This sickening display of privilege and ignorance was published six years before Bush sat idly by as the 9th Ward drowned.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Today in Misogyny: Online Gaming Edition
[Content note: This post contains sexually harassing language, descriptions of harassment, bullying, threats of rape, stalking, and other violent assaults, as well as discussion of rape culture and examples of misogyny in online gaming.]
The BBC World Service has a good article up about the problem of misogynist harassment and threats in online gaming culture. It includes a number of examples collected by female gamers, highlighting the work of Jenny Haniver at Not in the Kitchen Anymore as well as Grace and her colleagues at of Fat, Ugly, or Slutty. I highly recommend the BBC article. If you have the teaspoons for it, you may also want to visit the sites collecting examples of harassment. If you don’t, let me assure you that you probably know the general content, since the insults are about as fresh and cutting edge as Hammurabi’s Code: Women are insufficiently attractive! Women deserve violence! Women should restrict themselves to beer-brewing and papyrus-making labor in the kitchen! Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
The article also discusses the specific harassment of Miranda Pakozdi, who quit the gaming competition Cross Assault after enduring days of vicious sexual harassment from fellow gamer Aris Bakhtanians. Bakhtanians defended his misogyny by claiming it was just part of fighting game culture; he eventually apologized for his five days of bullying, calling it “a mistake.” While that might strike some as an inadequate description for five days of relentless body-shaming, rape jokes, and other misogynist cruelty, never fear. There are still rape-culture apologists who think Bakhtanians shouldn’t have apologized at all:
Jonathan Quamina, an avid gamer, expressed his support for Bakhtanians, telling him not to apologise."As a female you can't get upset if something is said that is obscene if you're hanging out in a room full of guys," he says.
"It's like going to a strip club as a female and getting upset that the chicks are all naked. For me it goes back to freedom of speech. We're a harmless bunch of people. This is just guys being stupid guys."
I’m sure I don’t have to explain to regular readers of this space what the problems are with this response, but I must admit I am kind of impressed at HOW MUCH FAIL is condensed into five short sentences. It’s like the Campbell’s Soup of gaming misogyny, condensed for your convenience! Let’s have a look at the ingredients:
As a female you can't get upset if something is said that is obscene if you're hanging out in a room full of guys
Conflating objections to harassment with prudery.
“Something obscene.” Speculation on one’s breast size. Rape jokes. Sexual assault. Yep, those are all just “something obscene,” in much the same way that the Battle of the Somme was just “something violent.” Ladeeeez need to get over the naughty words, amiright?
Nope!
I am fully conversant with obscenity in two different languages. I served in the Navy and studied profanity under true masters of the art. My dissertation draws on 17th century English theatre, and there is no culture on earth with has more synonyms for farts, genitalia, and putrefaction. These experiences allow me to wield “naughty words” in a fashion to make Andrew Dice Clay blush. So trust me when I say: I know the difference between mere obscenity and sexual harassment. So do most women who have experienced it. So do the decent people who haven’t experienced it, but actually listen to what women say, rather than trying to silence us with accusations of the vapors.
Next sentence:
It's like going to a strip club as a female and getting upset that the chicks are all naked.”
Drawing false equivalencies between harassment and other experiences.
Oh, does this ever bring back memories. Of Sesame Street. Because one of these things is not like the other.
I am not quite sure how to explain this, but going online to play a game is really, really not like going into a club where some human beings are displaying their bodies in various states of undress for other human beings. I mean, I get that it’s confusing and all—one involves walking in, paying a fee, dealing with a bouncer, buying ridiculously overpriced drinks, tipping the waitstaff and watching the dancers who are paid expressly to perform for the sexual stimulation of patrons. The other is going online, logging into a game, interacting with other human beings who are also there to play said game, and being viciously bullied and attacked on the basis of perceived gender.
Wait, that’s actually not similar at all!
For me it goes back to freedom of speech.
Claiming that the right to free speech ensures that threats and harassment can never be criticized.
I must have missed one of the Federalist Papers. Because I’m having a hard time understanding how the First Amendment guarantees the right to not be called out as a misogynist for making rape threats, jokes, and misogynist hate speech that makes gaming spaces unsafe for women. Not all speech is free of social, or even legal, consequences. What you’re calling “free speech” is actually an alleged “right” to threaten women until they go away. That’s hate speech. Don’t be surprised when you get criticized for it.
We're a harmless bunch of people
Positing the impossibility of harm done by people in your group.
If I had a penny for how often I heard one of my fellow gamers defend this kind of shit with the “we’re harmless geeks!” line, I would be able to compete with Mitt Romney in the elevator department. Dude, when a woman is in tears every night because of the bullying and harassment she receives from male players, they are not a “harmless bunch.” That is pretty much the definition of doing harm. This defense doesn’t make any sense.
And if you are of the vile opinion that psychological damage “doesn’t count,” then let’s take the odds that among your gaming group there are perpetrators of physical violence, shall we? In the United States, the CDC estimates that 1 million women are raped each year. That’s 1 in 5 in their lifetime. 1 in 6 have been stalked and 1 in 4 have experienced violence from an intimate partner.
Survivors of violence aren’t rare, and neither are the perpetrators of that violence. It’s pretty difficult to logically dismiss any group of people as blanket harmless. There are gamers who rape. There are gamers who stalk. Can you tell which online harasser is “just” talking shit, and which is a stalker? Nope. Women who respond with fear to online threats aren’t panicky nincompoops; they are responding rationally to a world which contains far too many abusers and rapists.
Which brings me to:
This is just guys being stupid guys.
Claiming that misogyny is natural or normal behavior for all men.
Nope! If you’re conflating “guys” with “raging asshole misogynists” and “being stupid guys” with “sexually harassing and threatening violence against women,” then there’s a problem. Plenty of men manage to get along just fine without actively oppressing the female-identified people they encounter online. And plenty of men who have done such things stop doing them once they learn about the harmfulness of such behaviors. So please, stop with the man-hate, and recognize that these behaviors are neither inevitable nor inherent to masculinity.
Because the sooner we can recognize that “normal” is actually extremely fucked up, the sooner we can start changing the culture.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Rape culture; revictimization.]
"In society, sometimes we question why rape victims are reluctant to come forward. So now we have our answer. ...We are disappointed."—Ben Andreozzi, attorney for Victim 4 in the case against Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach whose trial on charges of child rape is soon to start. Judge John Cleland has ruled that the complainants' "identities may not be concealed during the trial, although they will be protected through the jury selection process."
"Courts are not customarily in the business of withholding information," Cleland's ruling said. "Secrecy is thought to be inconsistent with the openness required to assure the public that the law is being administered fairly and applied faithfully."So victims of child rape will be identified in court, and will have to rely on the ethics of the media to protect their anonymity. Awesome.
But, the judge noted, "It is also be to hoped that various news organizations that will report on the trial will use what has become their professional custom to protect the privacy of alleged victims."
That will definitely encourage survivors of sexual violence to report crimes against them, especially in a rape culture where making rape allegations is considered a more heinously cruel act than actually raping someone.
Photo of the Day
[Content Note: Injury; death.]
Residents help carry a firehose as hundreds congregate around the crash site. [CNN]I don't even know how to begin to wrap my head around the devastation in Lagos after a passenger plane crashed into a heavily populated neighborhood over the weekend. There is not a lot of information yet about what caused the crash or how many casualties there are. It's a lot. A lot of people died. The grim scene worsened as more and more people showed up, and soldiers dispersed them with force.
And yet, among the chaos, community. People lifted a firehose over their heads, over the crowd, helping get precious water to the crash site, hot with fire and thick with smoke.
My sincerest condolences to those who lost loved ones, or aren't sure yet. That is insufficient, but I don't know what else to say.
RIP Eduard Khil
Eduard Khil, the Russian singer also known as Mr. Trololo, has died at age 77. What did he think when, in 2010, a 1976 clip of his performance of "I Am Glad, 'Cause I'm Finally Returning Back Home" on Soviet television went viral?
"I love it," Khil said. "People [are] doing parodies, having fun. It unites them."And here's a little bit of history about the song, which is a deceptively subversive wee tune:
The tune he belted out, "I Am Glad, 'Cause I'm Finally Returning Back Home," was originally written at the height of the Cold War in 1966 with lyrics about an American cowboy.In honor of Mr. Khil, here once again is Trolololivia.
Khil and his composer knew the highly restrictive government would never allow him to sing it.
Instead, they decided to ditch the words, and Khil simply sang the melody.
Video Description: Olivia the Cat "lip-synchs" to "I Am Glad, 'Cause I'm Finally Returning Back Home," aka the Trololo Song, while I scratch her back.
[H/T to Shaker reginahny, in comments.]
Film Corner!
[Content Note: Rape culture; bodily appropriation; spoilers for Snow White and the Huntsman.]
So, Iain and I saw Snow White and the Huntsman this weekend, about which we were really excited. Whooooooooops! You know how a lot of the promotional stuff for the film heavily implied this was a feminist reboot in which Snow White kicks ass blah blah fart? Yeah, not so much.
Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) is pretty much a straight-up Evil Feminist stereotype—a survivor of rape who has become a vicious, crazy, narcissistic, power-hungry, magic-wielding man-murderer. And Snow White (Kristen Stewart) is pretty much a straight-up Good Christian Girl stereotype—a pure virgin of exquisite beauty who says her prayers (literally) and is not complete without the true love of a man (who, by the way, tells her "don't flatter yourself" when she fears he intends to rape her while ripping off her skirt to enable her movement through a forest).
Yeah.
The movie is visually beautiful, and the costumes are absolutely stunning, but that's about all there is to recommend, unfortunately. Besides the retread of the Evil Queen vs. Pure Princess stuff, it's just quite a slow and disjointed film. Melissa Silverstein smartly observes: "[T]his film is the directed by first time director Rupert Sanders. Here is a guy who was handed over $100 million to make this movie. And with that money he created a gorgeous looking mess of a movie that just doesn't hold together. No first time female director would have been given that much money, ever."
A problem, as they say.
My biggest issue with this film, however, is something of which I was totally unaware going in: The eight dwarves are played by known actors of typical stature (Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, et. al.), made "dwarven" through a combination of trick photography, CGI, and actors with dwarfism wearing masks of the famous men's faces.
I will spare you my profanity-riddled rant (which Iain had to endure in the car on the way home, for what was approximately the one-millionth time) about the inherent problems of conflating people with dwarfism with the fantasy character class "dwarf," but I will say this: Superimposing the faces of actors of typical stature over the faces of actors with dwarfism is not helping that problem. Afuckinghem.
It is gross to borrow the bodies of people with dwarfism and give them to people who have achieved some level of fame only because they do not have dwarfism, and then defend that choice because there aren't enough famous actors who are dwarves.
And let me be clear about these roles: They were minor characters in the film. (Way beneath the pay grade, so to speak, of an actor like Peter Dinklage.) Were there a need for famous faces, or advanced acting chops, I failed to discern it. The entire reason for casting famous actors of stature seemed to be so the audience could be "delighted" by the trickery of "dwarving" Bob Hoskins and company.
There was absolutely no reason that actors with dwarfism couldn't have been cast in these roles, been the faces and voices of the characters as long as they were going to be the bodies.
And in further disappearing, according to this interview with Kristen Stewart, some of the doubles used to play the dwarves were women—but all of the known actors whose faces and voices were superimposed were male.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that people with dwarfism have to play dwarves. Among people with dwarfism, there is diversity of opinion on whether the association with the fantasy class is so injurious as to resist that type of casting. I can understand why a person with dwarfism might prefer to see casting like a typically-statured John Rhys-Davies' portrayal of Gimli in the Lord of the Rings franchise that breaks the association with mythical dwarves. I can also understand why an actor with dwarfism worries about losing some of the best paid gigs for dwarf actors in an industry that fails to tell real stories that include people with dwarfism. With the very occasional notable exception.
My criticism is specific to the borrowing of bodies with dwarfism as if the people who inhabit them aren't attached, and giving those bodies to other actors. It's the fat suit problem, the black/yellow face problem, except even worse, because it's not merely marginalized people's identities being appropriated, but their actual physical bodies.
Sorry, SWATH. I'm invoking the Soul Man, Starring C. Thomas Howell, Rule. Fail.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by eyeballs.
Recommended Reading:
Igor: Romney Adviser: Women's Health Issues Are 'Shiny Objects' That 'Distract' Voters
Tigtog: If Rapists Just Can't Control Their Urges… [Content Note: The post at this link challenges rape culture narratives and rape apologia.]
Dierdra: Why "If You Don't Like It, Make Your Own" Is Not a Valid Argument [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of various recent gaming fails around sexism and rape culture.]
Jamelle: "We've Heard it All Before"
Aaron: Obscenity: I Know It When I See It [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of grave environmental poisoning and politicized accusations of child pornography. NB: I do think the question of a child's consent (and capacity thereto) is missing here, but it makes important points about the hypocrisy of child welfare claims.]
Brandon: Illinois Attorney General to Intervene in Civil Unions Lawsuit
Fannie [on the same subject as Brandon]: The Word "Marriage" as a Meaningful Indicator of Two People's Status with Respect to One Another
Jason: Do Dogs Feel Guilty?
Pam: Herman Cain Gets His Very Own Radio Show!
Anna interviews Hollywood feminist Kerry Washington.
Finally! Are you reading the Angry Asian Man's regular link round-up? Well, you should be! It always has good stuff!
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
Sooooooo, since we're getting into the "look at that fucking shark" portion of the election, I'm not going to be doing a daily Generally Speaking for awhile, because zzzzzzzz. But! I will still bring you daily what has become the most important feature of Generally Speaking—Mitt Romney standing in front of stuff!
And, of course, if there's a big story related to the election, I (or another contributor) will cover it.
Please feel welcome and encouraged to use Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something as a general election thread, to drop in news links, talk about politics in general, and/or express your fury, enthusiasm, dread, excitement, indifference, or other feelings about this election.
Carry on!
Whoooooooooops!
It turns out that if you eat as little salt as recommended by "the experts," you could actually be increasing your risk of heart disease and other ailments.
[T]his eat-less-salt argument has been surprisingly controversial — and difficult to defend. Not because the food industry opposes it, but because the actual evidence to support it has always been so weak.Maybe so.
..."You can say without any shadow of a doubt," as I was told [back in 1998 while spending the better part of a year researching the state of the salt science] by Drummond Rennie, an editor for The Journal of the American Medical Association, that the authorities pushing the eat-less-salt message had "made a commitment to salt education that goes way beyond the scientific facts."
While, back then, the evidence merely failed to demonstrate that salt was harmful, the evidence from studies published over the past two years actually suggests that restricting how much salt we eat can increase our likelihood of dying prematurely. Put simply, the possibility has been raised that if we were to eat as little salt as the U.S.D.A. and the C.D.C. recommend, we'd be harming rather than helping ourselves.
...One could still argue that all these people should reduce their salt intake to prevent hypertension, except for the fact that four of these studies — involving Type 1 diabetics, Type 2 diabetics, healthy Europeans and patients with chronic heart failure — reported that the people eating salt at the lower limit of normal were more likely to have heart disease than those eating smack in the middle of the normal range. Effectively what the 1972 paper would have predicted.
...When several agencies, including the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, held a hearing last November to discuss how to go about getting Americans to eat less salt (as opposed to whether or not we should eat less salt), these proponents argued that the latest reports suggesting damage from lower-salt diets should simply be ignored. Lawrence Appel, an epidemiologist and a co-author of the DASH-Sodium trial, said "there is nothing really new." According to the cardiologist Graham MacGregor, who has been promoting low-salt diets since the 1980s, the studies were no more than "a minor irritation that causes us a bit of aggravation."
This attitude that studies that go against prevailing beliefs should be ignored on the basis that, well, they go against prevailing beliefs, has been the norm for the anti-salt campaign for decades. Maybe now the prevailing beliefs should be changed.
But, of course, now the anti-salt shit is wrapped up in the OH NOES OBESITY CRISIS, so it's not very likely (ha ha my understatement!) that prevailing beliefs will change—unless, naturally, it's to somehow to make anti-salt crusading even less about health and even more about fat.
[Previously in Gary Taubes.]
"I do think that that would be fair."
[Content Note: Transphobic language; Miss USA spoilers.]
So, last night, Iain and Kenny Blogginz and I are hanging out and we're watching the Miss USA pageant, because the entire thing is absolutely mystifying to all of us. We're only kind of half paying attention as we're chit-chatting and trying to smile for two straight minutes without our faces hurting, and then something interesting happened: Olivia Culpo, Miss Rhode Island, drew the Twitter question during the final round of judges' questions.
"Would you feel it would be fair that a transgender woman wins the Miss USA title over a natural-born woman?" Rob Kardashian asked her.
Now, mind you, I hate this question. I hate that it uses the loaded term "natural-born woman" and I hate that it's questioning "fairness" rather than justness. Still, I waited with held breath and, if I'm honest, the expectation of a trainwreck. The dread.
Miss Rhode Island took a moment. She looked concerned. She knew she was about to offend some people. And then she said: "I do think that that would be fair. I can understand that people would be a little apprehensive to take that road because there is a tradition of natural-born women, but today where there are so many surgeries, and so many people out there who have a need to change for a happier life—I do accept that because I believe it's a free country."
Tradition isn't a reason to uphold bigotry. Hey, lots of contestants get surgeries of one kind or another. Equality is part of a happy life. This is a free country, so of course it's fair to let trans women compete. That's a lot of good ideas to squeeze into one short answer!
Hosts Andy Cohen and Giuliana Rancic declared that Culpo "nailed it!" And then, a few minutes later, she won the whole damn thing.
Earlier in the competition, pageant officials asked Culpo for her definition of beauty. "Beauty is found in the way you treat others," she said. Indeed so.
