This blogaround brought to you by exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Recommended Reading:
Zerlina: #1is2many: Why Vice President Joe Biden Made Me Cry Today [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of violence against women.]
Atrios: Do the Maths
Dayvoe: Merely Thinking It Does Not Make It So...
Ragen: Amazing Unscripted Humanity [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of fat hatred and various forms of bullying.]
Andy: Hillary Clinton Sports Some Purple Shade
Philippa: Mate Crime: Learning Disability Week [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of abuse and exploitation of people with disabilities.]
Letters of Note: "I have now no further use for a birthday."
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Friday Blogaround
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
Today in the Washington Post: Romney's Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas—"Mitt Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India."
Ha ha see?
Seen
The best part was how the car was backed up into a space right in front of the restaurant entrance, to make sure everyone would see it. (Indiana only has rear plates.)
Upon consideration, I was surprised I'd never seen a URANUS plate before! I figured the notoriously persnickety state DMV would have denied it, but I guess they mainly apply decency standards to people who want to express atheism.
Indiana: Crossroads of America. Atheists not welcome. Butthole jokes totes cool.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 5, page 61: "I studied, and ran and rode my bike a lot. I was there to learn, and that's exactly what I did. The lessons were underscored when I visited my parents in China that summer. I'll never forget the contrast between what I learned about the free market at Harvard and what I saw in the closed isolation in China. Every bicycle looked the same."
There are more observations about how terrible China was because of its lack of a free market, but who cares. The more interesting thing to me is how he relates everything back to his own immediate experience. He rode his bike a lot...he noticed the uniformity of bikes in China. (Did he notice that, in China, way more people can afford those boring old bikes and live in communities built for bike access? Apparently not.) The entire world is assessed by how much it conforms with (GOOD!) or diverges from (BAD!) his experience. I have never witnessed a smaller mind in action.
[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
"Here is what is wrong, what has always been wrong, with equating feminist success with 'having it all': It's a misrepresentation of a revolutionary social movement. The notion that female achievement should be measured by women's ability to 'have it all' recasts a righteous struggle for greater political, economic, social, sexual and political parity as a piggy and acquisitive project."—Rebecca Traister writing in response to this Atlantic article.
Today in Rape Culture
by Shaker Myn
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
One could probably guess from the event name that the Skirt Chaser 5k this Saturday in Denver is going to be problematic. But the description emailed to potential runners, available online here, outlines how appalling it really is: The premise of the race is that the women start ahead of the men, the men "wait in anticipation for three LONG minutes", and then the women are chased down over the course of 3 miles.
A Skirt Chaser. Literally. Women start first, while men wait in anticipation for three LONG minutes. Once the men FINALLY start the chase is really on! What happens next is just over 3 miles of anticipation: Will the gals be caught? Will the guys get the thrill of not only the chase but also the win?The race is described as fun and flirty, rather than as a terrifying reenactment of street harassment and the threat of sexual assault or rape. I suppose this shows that the race organizers and I have a difference of opinion.
Of course, the whole thing is put on by a company that sells running skirts, and the primary purpose of running skirts seems to be maintaining as feminine a gender presentation as possible while doing sports. You know, the same sports where how you look is not supposed to matter as much as what you can do.
There are a lot of ways to make running events stand out as unique, such as costumes or obstacles or various themes. One could imagine putting on a race, even one that aims to sell running skirts, that celebrates women and encourages them to feel strong and free. Why would anyone instead choose to uphold the idea that this kind of harassment is tolerable, normal, even "fun"?
If you find this race as appalling as I do, I would strongly suggest donating to the Women's Sports Foundation, who create many opportunities for women and girls to enjoy sports free from gender-based oppression.
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 21 June 2012: A jaguar cub bats at his mother while she stands over him at the San Diego Zoo in California. [Ken Bohn/AFP/GettyImages]That wee jaguar baby belly may literally be the cutest thing I have ever seen.
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; morality eating; bullying.]
#7: Fat people are permission slips for thin people to eat what they want.
This entry was inspired by Shaker Linksknoepfer, who asked in the last thread: "Do any of you ever feel like thin people need you around to indulge, just to feel okay about eating any kind of 'bad' food?"
This is another extremely common experience of fat people—especially fat women, dining with thin women.
Using fat people as permission slips manifests in a couple of different ways (and following is not a comprehensive list, just a few common examples): Eating observably more when dining only with a fat person versus dining with that fat person while other thin people are present; communicating bluntly one eats more and/or different food when dining with a fat person; ordering something perceived as indulgent which a fat person has also ordered and defending that choice (as if it needs defense) with some variation on, "Well, as long as you're going to…"; begging and/or bullying a fat person into sharing (or "sharing") something perceived as indulgent, especially dessert.
The last one is particularly odious, as not only are we/our bodies/our fatness regarded as a permission slip to be "bad" and indulge in something "decadent," but, if we fail to eagerly consent to play that role, we are needled and cajoled into it—frequently under the threat that, if we don't agree to participate, our dining companion won't order it for hirself, thus saddling us with the blame for hir self-denial of food.
It is a terrible position to be put in, for a lot of reasons—not least of which is being treated like a gluttonous siren whose mere fat existence exhorts others to consumption.
(Which, of course, tacitly invokes the stereotype that all fat people eat enormous amounts of food.)
Now, part of this scenario is attributable to the cultural narratives about eating as a moral act, which results in lots of people, especially women, seeking "permission" to engage in "deviant eating." One of the ways humans seek "permission" to transgress cultural expectations is by recruiting accomplices—which is an urge that underlies both crime syndicates and spaces like Shakesville. The urge itself is neutral, but it is used in good and bad ways.
It's not necessarily a bad urge among dining companions. A thin woman who conspires with a receptive thin friend to order a dessert against all cultural messaging telling them to avoid that dessert at all costs, because neither of them has the will or ability to ignore that overwhelming messaging on her own, is not indulging a bad urge.
And that same thin woman might have the same intent when trying to draft a fat friend into the same scenario. But! Enter a lifetime of one's body being inextricably associated with excess, with overconsumption, with greediness, with dooming the very world with our avaristic gluttony, and a lifetime of bullshit studies which claim that fat is contagious, and a lifetime of having been implicitly or overtly used as a permission slip to be "bad" or "gross" or to "eat like a fat person," and what looks through the filter of thin privilege like an innocuous invitation is actually an incredibly loaded inquiry—one that might have preceded bullying many times before; one that we may not be able to discern as a casual invite and not a pronouncement that our bodies and the presumed "immoral eating" that created those bodies are being invoked with the explicit objective of a thin person giving hirself permission to indulge in food zie wants.
(Aside 1: Offering to share dessert—or whatever—with a fat person with whom you haven't established any boundaries around eating and/or a habit of not food-policing and body-shaming can also look very much like the suggestion: "You don't need a whole dessert; how about we share?")
(Aside 2: Ordering a dessert—or whatever—even after a fat person has said they do not want to share, but telling the server to bring two forks/spoons, even if your intention is genuinely just to encourage your dining companion to share if zie wants, may also be loaded for a lot of fat people, many of whom have the experience of thin friends asking for two forks/spoons just so it looks like they're sharing. I have even had a dining companion use both spoons while we were "sharing" a sundae, telling me, "I don't want them to think I ate this whole thing myself!")
If you want to eat something, eat it. If you can't give yourself "permission" to eat something, don't seek it elsewhere, especially not from a fat friend.
If you really need permission from a fat person to eat what you want, here it is: Eat what you want. Eating healthfully for your body is not a moral act, and eating unhealthfully for your body is not an immoral act. Eat what you want. You have my big fat permission, forevermore. Go forth and devour.
Daily Dose of Cute
Sophie
Olivia
Matilda
So many snuggles await!
Shaker Gardens Discussion Thread
Midsummer is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, so this seems like a good time to ask Shakers what they might be growing in their gardens, whether that be a patch out back, a bunch of containers on your apartment roof, or a single a pot on the windowsill. (Southern Hemisphere Shakers, please feel free to share your projects too, whether from last season, your future plans, or whatever winter gardening you might be doing.) No project is too small (or large) to share, and we're not fussy about how well-groomed it is, either. If you're growing something, or thinking about it, feel free to join in!
I have a number of things growing this year, and it's been a real learning experience. Although I have gardened in the past in Atlantic Canada and the U.S. Midwest, this is my first time with an extensive outdoor garden in the U.S. South. The good side: the long growing season means I can plant two summer crops and enjoy long spring and fall seasons of cooler weather crops. The bad side: omfg, THERE ARE MANY GIANT INSECTS, y'all!
We harvested our first black beans, corn (maize), and cherry tomatoes this week. Here are a few of the tomatoes from just before harvest time:
We have since eaten the ripe ones, and they were delicious! We also have some standard-size tomatoes going, but they're all still green. The corn was amazing as well; just boiled and eaten from the cob, no need for butter, thanks to its sweetness. I grew the corn in a patch with beans and cucurbits ( squash, melon, and cucumbers to be precise). It's a pre-Columbian farming method, practiced by many First Nations agriculturalists; the crops are dubbed the Three Sisters in Haudenosaunee tradition. According to my father, this interplanting is something my farmer-grandparents did back in the 1940s and 50s. I don't know if this was an old practice learned from Native family or neighbors, or something they picked up in one of the New Deal programs that paid them to try alternative farming methods. Anyway, it certainly works well. The beans happily vine up the corn and the squash (or other cucurbit crop) make a good ground cover. The corn and beans also give a bit of shade to the cucurbits as the days get hotter.
The corn and squash have also had serious pest problems. Some of the corn had been infested with European Corn Borer, a nasty little caterpillar that eats the ears of corn as it is developing. I'd say we lost about 50% of our corn to it. Our zucchini and summer squash, which had been producing prolifically for about 6 weeks, were infested by Squash Vine Borer, another caterpillar. The moth lays its hard-to-detect eggs at the base of the stem. They hatch and the grubs burrow into the stems, destroying the plant from the inside out. I performed radical surgery in an effort to save the plants, slicing open the stems and destroying as many borers as I could find, then piling up earth over the vine in hope that it would form new roots. Out of about 14 plants, 3 seem to have survived. On the bright side, the SVB has ignored our other cucurbits, and the watermelon, muskmelon, and cucumber are doing quite well. So well that I see a weekend of making pickles in my future!
I'm not trying to garden all-organic, but, as noted with the corn-beans-squash, I do use a lot of companion planting in the garden. I'm going to try radishes with my pumpkins to discourage the dreaded SVB. I have a number of flowers growing as companion plants. Marigolds snuggle up to the tomatoes, nasturtium help keep down the squash bug population, cosmos and zinnia both attract pollinators and serve as a good trap crop for Japanese Beetles. The zinnias have taken on a life of their own! They make nice cut flowers, too.
Shakers, what's in your garden? Share your projects, questions, tips and tricks below!
[Commenting note: Please respect that participants have different needs and goals with their gardening. For some, water or space limitations may be most important, while for others, pesticide-free methods are essential, or they may need to garden as inexpensively as possibly, etc.]
Today in Mitt Romney Eats Pie
Here's a fun news item for you: Romney Campaign Said to Ask Scott to Downplay Job Gains—"Mitt Romney's presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state's economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee's message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter."
People's lives improving under Barack Obama's presidency is really inconvenient for Mitt Rommey, y'all.
The Tyranny of OH HELL IT BURNS: 4. DOGMA
Oh. This again.
Before we get started, I want to congratulate anybody who had two in the "how many pages until Jonah Goldberg mentions Nazis?" pool. Go you!
On a related note, the first two pages of this chapter were complete garbage. So were the ten that followed.
Here's the chapter in a nutshell:
1. Goldberg implies that dogma is a something that someone believes to be right. He never really bothers to actually define the word. I guess he figures that anyone smart enough to buy his book is also smart enough to know the all the cool alternative definitions that the kids are using these days.
2. Liberals have come out (FETCHING SWEATER) against dogma. Goldberg gives some examples of liberals condemning dogma. The implications are that only liberals condemn dogma, and that dogma means what Goldberg wants it to mean. Sure. Why not?
3. Therefore, liberals don't believe in anything.
That's a pretty damning argument right there. It's also identical to the one Goldberg made in chapter 1: IDEOLOGY. Great, Goldberg has figured out search-and-replace technology.
Goldberg doesn't stop here. Like all good writers, he goes in for the kill. (Okay, it's mostly just Goldberg and Hemingway that do this, because BALLS.)
Liberals don't believe in anything. They oppose people who believe in things. DID YOU KNOW THAT SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE IN PRETTY KICK ASS THINGS? For instance, take Mother Teresa. She was a saint. Well, not technically. (If you assume these things are technical. Which they are.)
This means that liberals disagree with Mother Teresa! (This is probably the most accurate assertion Goldberg's made in the entire book.) Also, liberals hate Martin Luther King (who Goldberg is all for, given that his friend Gonah Joldberg is totes not a racist), apple pie, hot dogs (gay joke), and baseball (more different gay joke). Furthermore, liberals believe in slavery, in that they don't believe in things, and some people believe in there not being slavery.
FACT BREAK!
The War on Poverty was less successful at reducing the poverty rate than ignoring it was. In 1966 the poverty rate was roughly 19 percent. In 1974 after the anti-poverty programs were fully institutionalised, the poverty rate was 11.2 percent. Thirty years later, in 2004, when antipoverty spending was enormously greater [citation needed], the poverty rate was 12.7 percent.See, it's all dogma. Especially the part where LBJ noted that the War on Poverty wasn't as successful as he'd have liked (something about bitches).
There's a bunch of crap in there about abortion (doctors believe in abortion, because they are dogmatic), and climate change (some scientists believe in it, but they're dogmatic assholes).
Way to come out against dogma and totally undermine your thesis, dude!
In closing, here's one of the suggested questions that the publisher suggested I ask Jonah Goldberg when he comes to read at my bookstore/blog/kitchen:
Some might argue that language is ever evolving. In your opinion, why does a phrase have to adhere to its original meaning or inspiration if people have come to know and accept it as something else?
Random Nerd Nostalgia: Insta-Stache
[Description: 1960s comic book advertisement headlined "LOOK IMPRESSIVE ANYTIME! Enjoy an exciting, romantic quick change to suit your mood time: Send for a moustache, Side Burns and Van Dyke all at once! All three: $6.95. Simply check the color you want or send a sample of your hair and leave the matching to our expert. MAIL COUPON NOW! Adheres securely... off and on in seconds... can be worn as is or trimmed to just the size you want." There is a picture of a white man in blonde hair, w/ dark 'stache, sideburns, and goatee. There are different colors given (Blond, Black, Light Brown, Medium Brown, Dark Brown, Grey, Silver, Auburn "or send hair sample") and categories of ordering (there are not just moustaches, sideburns, and van dykes, there are "deluxe" moustaches, sideburns, and vandykes!) as well as prices and addresses. The company name is "Masculiner." OF COURSE IT IS.]
I don't know what anybody's "mood time" is, but I like to think maybe Butch Pornstache sent away for one of these, once, long ago. It's the romantic in me.
(Scanned from Wonder Woman March 1972.)
Mitch Daniels Will Ruin Everything, Eventually
In which I substitute an email conversation with Aphra_Behn (with her permission) for an actual post...
Aphra: Did you see this piece of news about Mitch Daniels? "Mitch Daniels Likely to Be Next President of Purdue." Barrrrrrrrf. The Boilermakers have my condolences.
Liss: I have. A bunch of people have sent it to me, but I don't know what to say about it. "Now that he's ruined the state, he's on to the state university system!" LOL. Daniels' fiefdoms of ruination keep getting smaller and smaller. First it was the White House, then the Indiana Statehouse, now Purdue... I expect him to show up on my doorstep with a plan to personally destroy my life any day now.
Aphra: Worst. Life coach. Ever!!!! But I am sure he will make a grrrrreat university president! He's a combative asshole with no PhD, no academic experience, no interest in deep, complicated thinking, and a profound contempt for students and teachers. Perfect!
Sanford Police Chief Fired
[Content Note: Violence; racism.]
Sanford, Florida Police Chief Bill Lee, whose resignation after failing to charge George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin was rejected by city commissioners in April, has now been fired, with "a three-month severance and a week's salary in addition to any earned time off," on top of the paid leave he's had since March 22. Pretty nifty deal for having completely failed at your job!
"After much thoughtful discussion and deep consideration for the issues facing the city of Sanford, I have determined the police chief needs to have the trust and respect of the elected officials and the confidence of the entire community," City Manager Norton Bonaparte said in a news release.What I will never understand is why a police officer would ever support an interpretation of the law that essentially amounts to: "Well, the other guy's dead, so I guess the killer's version of events will have to suffice, and he says it was justified. Case closed!" It doesn't seem like encouraging vigilantism and anarchy is in a police officer's best interest, never mind everyone else's.
"We need to move forward with a police chief that all the citizens of Sanford can support. I have come to this decision in light of the escalating divisiveness that has taken hold of the city."
...Late Wednesday night, representatives of the Martin family said they "respected" the city manager's decision.
"It's important that we really believe that, as all of this has unfolded, we've continued to move closer to justice," said family attorney Daryl Parks.
...Lee had said Zimmerman was not charged in the shooting because there were no grounds to disprove his account of the events -- that Martin had attacked him. Since then, Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
Anyway. I hope his replacement, for which a nationwide search is being conducted, proves more suited to law enforcement and justice.
Happy Birthday, Portly Dyke!
Instead of the traditional birthday cake, I thought I'd make
a Ron Swanson face from all the bacon and eggs you have!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!
Let's crack open a little beeee-eeeer!!!
And eat a cheeseburger, toooooooooo!!!
Happy birthday, grrl! I love you!
