Question of the Day
What's the strangest thing you've ever found in a pants pocket, jacket pocket, purse, wallet, etc. about which you'd totally forgotten? Or inside something you'd purchased second-hand?
Originally suggested by Kenny Blogginz, who loves buying clothes at thrift stores and has found various weird crap left in pockets.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 5, page 60: "My favorite summer job was as a sporting-goods salesman at the Sears, Roebuck and Company on Main in downtown Houston during the summer between my junior and senior years of college. I was excited about the job and my second day at work I rang up the highest volume of sales in the store. I was really hustling. But then one of the two commissioned salesmen took me in the back storeroom. He didn't mind me working hard, he said, but this was only a summer job for me and it was his full-time living. 'Commissions put food on my table,' he said. 'I would appreciate it if you would handle the little items and let me have the big-ticket sales.' I understood, and became the leading salesman of Ping-Pong balls. I also became a friend of the salesman who was working on commission."
And thus ends another scintillating and unintentionally revealing passage from Privilege, Balls, and All the Friends I Ever Made.
[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.]
Quote of the Day
"I don't want to answer that question. That's a clown question, bro."—Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid channels Nevada-born baseballer Bryce Harper during a press conference.
[Video Description: Senator Reid says the quoted words, followed by laughter.]
The Sandusky Trial Gets Grosser
[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia; rape jokes.]
Well, Jerry Sandusky's wife says "she did not see him have inappropriate contact with [any of the eight men who have accused her husband of abusing them as children] over the years they visited the couple's home or traveled with them," so case closed! Send the jury home, because obviously this totally objective testimony proves that the accusers are all liars!
If you're still not convinced, Mrs. Sandusky has more to say:
She described Victim 1 as "clingy," Victim 9 as "a charmer" and Victim 4 as "very conniving, and he wanted his way and he didn't listen a whole lot."I do not know for sure that Jerry Sandusky raped those eight men when they were children, but I do know for sure that what doesn't convince me of his innocence is his wife talking about children in the same way that a cheated-on wife might talk about her husband's adult mistresses. Those vixens seduced him! Yikes.
Dottie Sandusky also says she was home at the time one of the accusers says he was "screaming for help" from the basement, but she never heard anything. Which we are naturally meant to take as evidence that it never happened, not that a person who describes a molested child as "clingy" or "conniving" might have chosen to hear and see only what she wanted.
Truly, layers upon layers of rape culture in this case.
In other news, Jerry Sandusky's defense attorney Joe Amendola responded to reporters' questions about whether Sandusky will take the stand in his own defense by telling them to "stay tuned" to the soap opera. When asked which soap opera, he replied: "General Hospital," then paused, reconsidered, and offered instead: "All My Children."
Hilarious.
"I don't own my child's body."
[Content Note: Consent issues.]
This is a remarkably good piece at CNN about empowering children with choice about who they touch and who touches them.
Photos of the Day
Today in Haskhowa, India, a fully grown male wild leopard fell into a water reservoir tank at a tea estate and was subsequently rescued by the Sukna Forest Rescue Team from the Mahananda Wildlife sanctuary, who lowered a net into the tank, allowing the leopard to climb to safety unharmed. [Getty Images]
"Okay, this looks promising..."
"Holy shit, what did I get myself into?"
"All right, get me the fuck outta here already."
"Phew."
Mitt Romney Would Like You to Remember That Barack Obama Is a Fancypants Elitist Arugula-Eating Snob and Mitt Romney Is a Real American Who Definitely Cares About and Totally Understands You
Washington Post—Romney plans posh weekend donor retreat featuring Rove and Vice Presidential hopefuls:
Fresh off the best fundraising stretch of his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney plans to spend this weekend strategizing and fraternizing with his biggest bundlers at a posh resort in Park City, Utah.The retreat, at which there will definitely totally for sure absolutely be tons of great strategizing about how to help struggling USians, "will be closed entirely to the press." Of course it will.
The presumptive nominee and his senior advisers and aides are hosting two days of policy sessions and campaign strategy discussions at a Deer Valley resort for more than 100 top fundraisers and their spouses. Those who raised more than $100,000 are expected to attend.
More than a dozen Republican heavy-hitters are scheduled to join the private retreat as special guests. According to a fundraiser who is attending, guests include some GOP stars believed to be contenders to be Romney's vice presidential running mate: Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. John Thune (S.D.).
Bush strategist Karl Rove, who helps run American Crossroads, the well-funded GOP super PAC, is planning to speak at the retreat, said the fundraiser, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the event. Rove's appearance could raise questions because of campaign finance laws barring any coordination between super PACs and actual campaigns.
...Romney's finance officials have touted the retreat as a way to reward top-performing bundlers who make their own donations and then raise many times that from within their network of friends and associates.
..."You get to go home and tell your friends and family and colleagues, 'I just spent the weekend with Mitt Romney,' and all of that is really good for morale," said a second fundraiser who will be there and who also was not authorized to speak publicly.
My top secret sources inform me that attendees will be receiving gold-plated bootstraps as party favors.
Fatsronauts 101
Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.
[Content Note: Fat bias; food policing.]
#6: Any fat person eating a salad or exercising is trying to lose weight.
This entry was requested by Shaker Allison, although this axiomatic assumption—that a fat person eating what is generally coded as "healthful" food and/or exercising must have a weight-loss objective—is a complaint I have heard many times from other fat people (and have myself).
First of all, I want to insert the caveat once again that what constitutes a healthy diet for one person is not necessarily a healthy diet for another person. (For people who can't digest lettuce, for example, the ubiquitously-invoked "healthy salad" is not, in fact, healthy.) I also want to note that a casual observation of what someone is eating doesn't always convey its "healthfulness"—a sandwich or pasta dish at a restaurant might have less fat and fewer calories than a loaded salad, but a thin person eating the salad will (generally) reflexively be coded as "eating healthy" while a fat person eating the pasta will (generally) reflexively be coded as "eating unhealthy." And, because every person's unique needs and circumstances differ, those reflexive conclusions could be right or wrong, depending on the individual.
It's truly not as simple as "salad=healthy eating," and yet A Salad has become such an indelible symbol of "someone making culturally-approved moral eating choices in public" that I will use it here as a cultural marker to indicate any overseen eating construed as "healthful/moral."
So, by way of drawing a picture for not-fat people who need to understand this experience: Many years ago, I was working in an office with this guy, who, in addition to his other contemptible qualities, policed everyone else's his female coworkers' food choices.
Pretty much every day for years, I ate either a turkey or veggie wrap with a side of fresh fruit from a nearby vendor, mostly because it was convenient. This vendor also sold a salad that I loved. It was tuna with pasta and sun-dried tomatoes and capers and fresh parmesan, with some kind of balsamic aioli/mayo—I don't know what all was in it, but it was fucking delicious. (Because it was loaded with tasty fat!) I still dream about that salad a million years later. It was not as good (for me) as the wrap, and it was expensive, so it was a real treat for me when I got it every once in a while. And the first time Tim saw me eating it, he commented: "I'm glad to see you're finally trying to do something about your weight!"
There are about a million different things wrong with that observation, starting with the fact that it was made at all, out loud, by one adult human being to another adult human being, but for now I'll focus on the fact that this knucklehead assumed that because he saw me eating A Salad, I was trying to lose weight.
Not only was I not trying to lose weight, but, if I had been, I wouldn't have chosen that salad, which had probably double the calories of my typical lunch.
"I'm not trying to lose weight," I replied.
"Oh," he said, shifting uncomfortably. I looked at him, as he squirmed, trying to figure out if he should say what he was thinking: Well, you should be. I narrowed my eyes and smiled. "Um, okay," he said, before scurrying away.
And that was the last of those conversations.
But only with him—because the near-universal expectation of fat people is that we hate our bodies and are subsequently de facto desirous of weight loss; thus, if we are "eating right" or exercising, we must be doing so in an attempt to achieve that goal. So there is a never-ending stream of people willing to say things to me like: "Oh, it's good to see you exercising—that'll do wonders for your figure!" while I'm walking the dogs, or: "I'm on a diet, too!" while I'm eating A Salad, or: "Trying to lose some of that weight?" when I pass on seconds, or don't want dessert, or drink a diet soda, or any number of things that are perceived as evidence that I am Definitely Trying to Lose Weight.
I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm trying to be as healthy as I can be at whatever size I am—a paradigm so outside the mainstream that people can't look at my fat body in any other context than within a frame that dictates I must be trying to change it.
Just like many thin people eat A Salad or exercise to increase healthfulness, or strengthen their bodies, or maintain their current shape, or because they like the taste of salad or enjoy the rush of endorphins from running, or whatfuckingever, many fat people do the same.
And when you assume that fat people are trying to lose weight, out loud, to them, you are tacitly saying their bodies need fixing. Oh, I just assumed that you'd be trying to change that hideous shape of yours. My mistake!
I'm not worried about changing the shape of my body. I'm rather more concerned with changing the culture that tells me in every conceivable way that my body is less than.
[Related Reading: Ragen—Is it True that Most Fat People Don’t Exercise?]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by floss.
Recommended Reading:
Algernon: Wealth Losses by Race and Ethnicity
Pam: Purportedly Pro-LGBT Civil Rights Conservative Org GOProud Endorses Romney
Richard: Eric Holder Claims Executive Privilege over Fast and Furious Investigation
Maya: Olympic Sexism Study: Male Athletes Have Skill and Female Athletes Have Luck
Angry Asian Man: The Problem with The Rise of Asian Americans
Akimbo: Women's Human Rights Must Be at the Center of the Family Planning Summit: Civil Society Declaration
Andy: Bipartisan Group of Senators Asks for ENDA Markup
Jenny: Choosing to Live Child-Free
Helen: Childfree, Not Childless
Garland: The Zimmermans, Perjury, and the Aid of White Supremacy
Finally: It's Dude Week at the Adipositivity Project! [Images may be NSFW.]
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Today in Unnecessary Reminders
Nestlé Has a Funny Idea of "Health and Wellness"
[Content Note: Rape culture, reproductive coercion, misogyny, homophobia, fat-hatred, body policing, food policing, demonizing of body hair, classism, objectification, fake German.]
Shaker IndyM sent me the link to this advert for Lean Pockets, part of a series in which David Hasselhoff plays a character named Günther, aka "Mr. Lean," who offers "advice" about why it would beneficial for people to eat Lean Pockets. In a series about terrible advertisements that is now well over 100 entries, this is one of the biggest garbage disasters of them all, failing on just about every conceivable level.
[Complete transcript below the fold.]
Fake German accent complete with fake German words? Check. Playing gay? Check. Body policing? Check. Food policing? Check. Sexual objectification? Check. Fat hatred? Check. Mocking people with body hair? Check. Equating thinness with happiness, attractiveness, and personal success? Check. Ridicule of large families? Check. Classism? Check. Heterocentism? Check. Reducing women to weight- and sex-obsessed nincompoops? Check. Stereotype of the sassy gay mentor? Check. Treating food as a moral choice? Check. Treating a thin partner as a reward for moral eating? Check. Treating a fat partner as punishment for immoral eating? Check. Implying fat women do not deserve and cannot have love and contentment? Check.
A rape culture trope about a woman under the influence reluctantly "consenting" to sex/marriage and bearing multiple children against her will? Checkity-check-check.
I could go on (and on and on), but the point, I feel, has been sufficiently made. That is a lot of contemptible shit to pack into two minutes.
Lean Pockets' Facebook page is here. Lean Pockets is, however, a Nestlé brand. Nestlé promotes itself explicitly as a company interested in "nutrition, health, and wellness," but apparently does not consider body-shaming, which is demonstrably associated with disordered eating that kills people, or antigay stereotyping, which is demonstrably associated with the violent homophobia underlying hate crimes, or rape culture narratives, which underwrite epidemic sexual violence, to be inconsistent with "health and wellness." You can contact Nestlé directly here, and/or tweet at them here.Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
Today in polls that won't matter for another four months: Obama Leads in Poll as Voters View Romney as Out of Touch.
Ha ha well in fairness to Mitt Romney, it's hard to be in touch when you're vacationing with your family LIKE REAL AMERICANS in your platinum moon mansion. I mean, everyone knows that the space-phones in the moonbuggies get terrible reception down by the Sea of Tranquility.
Question of the Day
What is your best memory from elementary/primary school? By which I mean: A school-related memory (including home-schooling, if applicable), as opposed to just any old memory from that age.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 5, page 59: "I had been concerned by the race riots that had challenged America's soul. I wanted to make a difference."
Sometimes I just take this book and throw it right on the floor.
[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.]
No Girls Allowed
Mitt Romney's clubhouse is boys only:
The Romney campaign seems determined to learn from McCain's mistakes, maybe even to a fault. The process of vetting a vice presidential candidate can be political in its own right; look no further than a top Rubio advocate's pushback to BuzzFeed about the Florida senator's supposed exclusion from Romney's short list.Women in politics are subjected to a higher level of scrutiny. That doesn't make them a liability, if you choose a qualified woman.
But in leaking few details about their search, the Romney campaign also loses out on an opportunity to show they've at least made an effort to seek out various candidates whose mere consideration might be needed to placate certain corners of the party.
In particular, few women except for New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte – a freshman lawmaker from New England with only scant federal experience – are thought to be under consideration by Romney.
"I think unfortunately, Palin poisoned the well on that," said one informal Romney adviser, fretting that any woman selected as VP would draw inevitable comparisons to the former Alaska governor. "I would guess if I were inside the Romney mind that they're worried that any woman chosen will be subjected to a higher level of scrutiny. "
But Mitt Romney isn't looking for someone qualified. He's looking for someone who can help him win. So he wants to be able to trade on the presumption of competence and decency reflexively afforded privileged people by the media, especially straight white cis men, i.e. everyone on his veep shortlist.
Which means he hasn't learned much of anything from John McCain at all.
In a decent country with a functional media, this would be a huge red flag and people would consider such a rank display of wanton opportunism to be a disqualification from higher office.
But here, it's just another anecdote about another terrible man who could be our president.
On "Prudishness"
[Content Note: Rape culture narratives; violations of personal boundaries.]
My earlier post about the Sandusky trial contained an aside about communal/mandatory showering in schools and/or athletic programs upon which I wanted to expand with respect to a broader rape culture narrative.
Although, as I noted, many people report, as adults, having been deeply uncomfortable or traumatized by being forced to disrobe in front of peers and/or teachers, there is nonetheless a strong cultural bias against viewing those people as anything other than oversensitive and, quite commonly, prudish.
Charges of prudishness are one of the most valuable, and oft-wielded, weapons of the rape culture, and they are extremely effective, because to be a prude is to be uncool, frigid, a hater of sex—a charge that only works because "sex" and "sexual violence" are so routinely conflated.
In reality, prudishness is often a charge leveled against someone who simply wants the right to consent.
Accusations of prudishness, especially as a silencing strategy, are particularly pernicious among Western progressives, where an enthusiasm for sexual libertinism is considered central to the political ideology.
And of course there is good reason for that emphasis on broadmindedness about sex—racial equality, women's liberation, reproductive rights, marriage equality, gay rights, gender equality, anti-rape advocacy, age of consent laws, and all sorts of intersecting civil rights issues centered around sex, gender, and reproduction are dependent on recognizing and respecting the sexual agency of individuals across a diverse spectrum of sexual orientations, preferences, and practices.
It is also on the left where one most readily finds arguments countering deeply religious and conservative arguments that promote shame about sexuality, reproduction, and the human body itself. There is value to these arguments: To treat parts of the human body as inherently "evil," or gross, or less than is problematic, especially since those valuations inevitably entrench privilege.
But. In spaces where there is quite understandable contempt for treating nude bodies as shameful or dirty, reactions often swing wildly in the other direction, where any desire for privacy is treated as something of which to be ashamed—as prudishness.
This pattern is enacted within families, too: A generation raised by parents who are genuinely prudish, who treat nudity as something disgraceful, may raise their children in an environment in which there are no boundaries around nudity or privacy at all, and request for such is belittled or shamed.
Somewhere in the middle there exists a balance in which it is communicated that it's okay to be open about your body and accepting of all bodies, while also retaining control over who sees your body and, crucially, whose body you see.
To feel uncomfortable at the unbidden sight of another naked human body is not necessarily about prudishness. It is often about having not been given the opportunity to consent to see that body, even if one would have consented given the chance.
"It's just a human body," admonishes the Prude Policers, in defense of their right to display their bodies to anyone without solicitation of consent. But there's a lot of hostility to consent operating behind "it's just a human body" arguments. Further, that dismissive judgment elides the realities that we live in a culture in which bodies are highly sexualized; that most adults have sexual responses to some other adult naked bodies; that we don't live in a culture in which nudity is the norm; and that most survivors have had naked body parts used as vessels of sexual violence.
Even in middle school gym classes, there are survivors of sexual violence. To steal away their right to consent to reveal their naked bodies, or to view naked bodies, is cruel. To then mock them as "prudish" for what is really an expressed desire for control over their sexual agency and bodily autonomy is crueler still.
And it is a cruelty whether directed at an uncomfortable child, or an adult recalling hir discomfort in years hence.
I am not a person who is squeamish around naked human bodies, of any nature. I am also not particularly squeamish about showing my body. But I am a person who wants the right of refusal to be naked in front of someone else, and to have other adults be naked in front of me. (With the notable exception of breastfeeding mothers.*) That doesn't make me a square. That makes me a person with eminently reasonable boundaries.
No one has to share my particular boundaries in order to respect them.
And when such boundaries are held up as evidence of prudishness—oh those sex-hating feminists!—that empowers the rape culture.
(So, by the way, does treating antipathy toward sex as A Problem, instead of one of many viable opinions about it.)
Central to the dismantling of the rape culture will have to be a solid rejection of the idea that anyone who expresses any kind of discomfort about nudity is a prude. It is absolutely possible to reject narratives of shaming around human bodies while simultaneously embracing the idea that there should be boundaries around our bodies and other bodies, which need to be respected.
Boundaries around access to human bodies honors those bodies. Respect elevates their value.
If you doubt the truth of those statements, consider that nothing regards the human body with more hostility, contempt, and intent to harm than the rape culture, which has little truck with boundaries or respect.
-------------------------------
* A subject not on-topic for this thread.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please take care to use "I" language in this thread, especially as its intent is to subvert the culture of judgment around others' boundaries.]
