Here is the lede of that story: "The U.S. Air Force has now identified at least 31 women as victims in a growing sex scandal, a four-star general said Thursday, and there might be more. The Air Force is broadening its investigation to 'actively seek any others that may have been affected by this,' Gen. Edward Rice, the commander of Air Force Training, said."
Here is further copy from the story about what is being described in both the headline and the lede as a "sex scandal" (emphases mine):
The scandal came to light in June 2011, when a young female trainee came forward and accused her male instructor of assaulting her. Staff Sgt. Luis Walker now faces a general court-martial on 28 charges, including rape, adultery and aggravated sexual assault. He is scheduled to appear in court July 16.
In November 2011, Rice says several military training instructors, both men and women, overheard a group of male instructors "talking about incidents that were unacceptable" and reported what they heard to superior officers.
This week, the Air Force brought charges against two more instructors.
Master Sgt. Jamey Crawford is accused of giving alcohol to a female trainee and having sex with her. Tech. Sgt. Christopher Smith is accused of seeking to conduct an intimate relationship with a trainee, making sexual advances toward a trainee and carrying on a personal social relationship with a second trainee.
"The basic training environment in particular is a target-rich environment for sexual predators," says Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps officer who says the problem goes beyond one branch of service. Bhagwati says there's no such thing as male instructors having consensual sex with young, female recruits.
"You cannot do anything without requesting permission from your drill instructor. You cannot use the bathroom, you cannot move from left to right, you are literally in many cases a robot waiting for permission to take a step."
People in positions of power do not "have sex with" their coerced charges. Men do not "have sex with" women who are incapacitated by alcohol. This is not a "sex scandal." This is an endemic culture of sexual abuse.
One: It is late in the day, and I am hurting. The chondritis that inflames my cartilage slithers from its lair in my left side up into my chest, my neck, my shoulder, curling around to my back and gripping me like some maleficent constrictor. It hurts to move; it hurts to breathe. I sit at the end of the chaise, my feet on the floor, intending to stand, then instead lie backward, my body a fallen L of concession. Zelda comes over to me and curls herself around my head and shoulders. She licks my face then lays her head on my shoulder. Still and quiet, we lie there together, breathing in rhythm. I can feel her heartbeat in my hair. My body relaxes. The pain does not go away, but it gets quieter. I stroke her head and wonder if there is any way I can ever communicate to this dog how truly grateful I am.
Two: Iain is in the garage, running on the treadmill. I am using the opportunity to watch a documentary about shelter dogs that he cannot bring himself to watch. There is a terrible scene in which we are shown how shelter dogs are euthanized in many shelters—in groups, terrified, whimpering. Zelda, my shelter dog rescued from that very fate, has been sitting beside me, and at the sound of their desperate cries—a sound unique and unforgettable, maybe even for a dog—she stirs and her jaw visibly clenches. She looks up at me—for reassurance, I think. I grab her face in my hands and kiss her nose and tell her that she's a good girl. I turn off the television and cuddle her. She rests her whiskered chin on my knee, looking at me intently with deep brown eyes, and I imagine that she wonders if there is any way she can ever communicate to me how truly grateful she is.
It is trite to say I rescued her and she rescues me back. But it is also true.
* * *
Right now, less than a third of pet cats and dogs in the US are obtained from shelters, where about 4 million (60% of shelter dogs and 70% of shelter cats) are euthanized annually. If you are thinking about getting a pet, please consider rescue.
"When Romney (or anyone) says something about getting back to an America 'that the founders envisioned,' I cringe. If you are going to say such a thing, you need to concretely explain what you mean. I guess Romney means that the founders envisioned a smaller government but, like I mentioned before, who does he mean and to what exactly is he referring? And if we do agree that the founders wanted small, limited government we have to acknowledge that they saw that as a possibility because they believed that there would always be enough land to go around to white men (part of the need to exterminate/remove Native people), that women would always be dependent and never part of the citizenry, that farms would be the primary space of residence, and that the economy would depend on exploited labor stolen from black people."—Jessica Luther, aka scATX, in "Hollow Words and Dog Whistles," which you should definitely read in its entirety.
1,000,000+: The number of homeless students in the US during the 2010-2011 school year, per a report from the Department of Education. Which doesn't even include the number of homeless children who are not yet school-aged, have never been enrolled in public education programs, and/or are home-schooled.
But, you know, at least rich people don't have to pay more taxes.
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.
This expressed belief falls generally into two separate sub-categories: A. Fat people don't deserve to own or have access to anything nice; and B. Fat people don't deserve to have personal successes or happiness. I'll take them one at a time.
Fat people don't deserve to own or have access to anything nice. Several Shakers have emailed about the various ways in which it is communicated to fatsronauts who work out at a gym that they don't "deserve" the good equipment—disparaging looks, passive aggressive comments about how someone who "only walks" shouldn't be on a treadmill, overheard commentary about how fat people "break the machines," long-suffering, impatient, or judgmental sighs at having to wait for a fatty to finish on a nicer machine while a slightly less-nice machine stands empty.
This is one of the subtler (by which I mean less visible to other thin people) ways that fat people are discouraged from participating at gyms—this constant low-level hostility about fat people "taking away" the "good stuff" from the thin people. And it just another way in which we Can't Win—if we don't exercise, we are shamed; if we do exercise, we are shamed. It's also one of the reasons there are fat-only gyms starting to pop up.
There are countless situations in which I've evidently been given a less-nice version of something because I'm fat—from being ushered to an older go-kart at a fun park (even thought I still weigh less than the 6'6" muscleman who wasn't similarly presumed capable of destroying a go-kart with his ass) to being given a shitty table by the kitchen in an upscale restaurant.
(Dear Restaurant Staff: Your hushed debate while pointing to a floor chart of empty tables in between furtive glances in my direction isn't nearly as clever or inscrutable as you think it is. Love, Liss. P.S. If you're going to nakedly discriminate against fat people, you ought to have an excuse ready when one of us asks you point-blank: "Can we have that table by the window instead, please?" Not that I don't enjoy your flushed, stuttering acquiesce to not treating me like a monster.)
From fat friends, I've heard stories about always being given ratty gowns at doctors' offices; about being given the shittiest office at work, while others stand vacant; about arguing with a car salesman who could not provide a legitimate explanation for why he wouldn't allow a test-drive of the nicest car on the lot; about having to fight to see the nicest engagement ring at a store as less-nice after less-nice ring were offered instead, despite insisting I want to see THAT one. (Getting access to the nicest bridal stuff while fat could be a whole post on its own.) On and on and on. And while excuses can be made—and we fat people are always looking, too, for other reasons for this slight or that rudeness—the pattern is hard to ignore.
Especially since it is a pattern many of us have experienced since childhood, or witnessed in childhood: I was not a fat child, but I remember the boys in my fourth-grade class all agreeing they gave their worst Valentine's cards (from the classic boxes of cheapo cards used in class-wide exchanges) to the fat girl in the class.
There is a very common habit among fat-haters about saving the worst for the fatties. And sometimes people who hold this belief actually get angry when a fat person insists on something better, so deeply held is the belief that fat people don't deserve the nicest of the things.
Fat people don't deserve to have personal successes or happiness. This is evident in the constant exhortations to self-harm and threats of violence that virtually every blogger (especially the female ones) who engage in fat activism receive. The most vicious emails (and comments) I get are not just about my being a feminist female blogger but a fat feminist female blogger. I should kill my fat self. Iain should kill my fat ass. My correspondents want to kill me because I'm a fat cunt. The man who raped me should have killed my fat ass after he was done with me. Etc.
Fat people don't even deserve to live, no less live a meaningful life of joy.
And it isn't just soulless trolls who believe that. It's all the people who endorse or remain indifferent to all the ways in which fat hatred kills fat people every day: Emergency crews who laugh at fat people's weight or appearance while fat people die; doctors who can't see past patients' fat to treat deadly health issues, like blood clots, cancers, chronic diseases, internal injuries, or infections causing shortness of breath that's chalked up instead to a lack of fitness; medical research that does not include fat bodies or develop treatment regiments and proper dosing for fat bodies; medical equipment that cannot accommodate fat bodies; fat shaming that keeps people from seeking healthcare or exercising; fat-hatred that underwrites less-robust healthcare coverage; and all the other ways in which we tacitly support the notion that fat people don't even deserve to live, no less live a meaningful life full of joy.
And then there are the ways the people who purport to care about us bully and shame us, and the ways in which they communicate that we don't really deserve what success or happiness we have because we're fat.
I cannot speak to whether this dynamic exists between male friends, but among female friends—especially straight female friends—there can exist a very destructive dynamic in which thin women who endeavor to play by the rules of the Patriarchy and hew closely to its kyriarchal Beauty Standard are deeply aggrieved when fat friends achieve some level of professional or personal success that they have not.
It's ugly, but understandable—the Patriarchy promises them that they will be rewarded for compliance, and when it is instead their fat, hairy-legged, feminist friend who's got the great job and the great husband (or whatever), that is perceived as a grave injustice, particularly when fatness is coded as "letting oneself go" and noncompliance with feminine beauty ideals is coded as "laziness," while keeping fit and stylish and pretty is considered hard work, and costly at that.
It's not jealousy (for which it is frequently mistaken). It's anger.
A fatsronaut friend's success, when their contentment remains elusive, is bitterly regarded as evidence of a bad return on their investment.
And the embedded implication is that happy fat people don't deserve the happiness they've got.
At least not while there are thin people who haven't got the same.
There's a lot of stuff wrapped up in beliefs about what fat people do and don't deserve—a culture of judgment, a culture of competitiveness in which personal achievement is treated like a zero sum game, the gossamer promises of the Patriarchy. But at its root, it's the same old shit: Fat people being considered less than.
We are not. And we deserve all the good stuff in life, too.
In today's news: The Mitt Romney campaign continues to be supergross, using old footage of Hillary Clinton from the 2008 primary campaign to take a swipe at President Barack Obama now.
Yeah, your ad might be more effective if she hadn't been successfully working as a key member of his administration for the past four years. Yeesh.
[Content Note: Reproductive rights; reproductive coercion; Christian Supremacy.]
The conscious dissemination of misinformation to women and other people with uteri is an integral part of the war on agency, so this ruling regarding "pregnancy crisis centers" disclosures is very disappointing:
A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Baltimore cannot require faith-based pregnancy counseling centers to post disclaimers noting they won't assist clients in receiving abortions or birth control.
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., voted 2-1 to uphold a lower court's ruling that the ordinance was unconstitutional — drawing praise from Catholic leaders who had opposed the ordinance and a defense of the law from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, its original sponsor.
The 2009 ordinance, which Rawlings-Blake sponsored when she was City Council president, drew national attention and was challenged in court by the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church and then-BaltimoreArchbishop Edwin F. O'Brien.
While the city said such centers had provided misleading information in the past and the city had a vested interest in protecting the public health by ensuring honest advertising of services, critics of the ordinance derided it as an assault on anti-abortion beliefs and freedom of speech.
While Mayor Rawlings-Blake disagrees with the decision and will "carefully review the ruling and consider all legal options going forward," Archbishop William E. Lori, on behalf of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, was naturally thrilled with the decision:
"At a time when religious freedom is being challenged on many fronts, this ruling represents a major victory for the First Amendment and for those people who seek to live their lives and their faith according to it," said Archbishop William E. Lori, who is in Rome, in a statement. "I applaud the Court for recognizing that these centers were being targeted for their pro-life views and for sending a strong message to the rest of the nation that these kinds of onerous, discriminatory laws have no place in a nation founded on freedom."
Leaving aside the self-evident my rights end where yours begin rebuttal to that horseshit, I'd love to know from what part of the Christian doctrine is the good archbishop construing an endorsement of deception.
A lot of people have mentioned in comments, or via email, that their Facebook, inbox, personal life is blowing up over the Affordable Care Act. One of the things I'm seeing and hearing a lot is this complaint that the middle class is "footing the bill" for the ACA, as if it's an unreasonable burden.
Well, here's a response to that nonsense, should you need it: The very wealthy can afford private insurance; the very poor qualify for federal and state healthcare programs. The Affordable Care Act is for members of the working and middle classes who fall into the gap—not poor enough to qualify for state aid, not rich enough to pay out-of-pocket.
(And even with the ACA, there are still millions of people who won't be covered in any way.)
The ACA is not perfect by any means (see above), but it's wrong to suggest that Obama is exploiting the middle class: This is an opportunity for the working/middle classes to invest in themselves and minimize individual risk (of bankruptcy, foreclosure, death) that they didn't have before. They're not "footing the bill" to pay for, well, whatever people making this complaint think that they're paying for.
Naturally, I wish we were in the process of raising taxes on corporations and the very wealthy to pay for universal healthcare, but we're not. Instead, what the working/middle classes have been given is a means to take care of one another.
That's only "footing the bill" if you truly don't give a fuck about helping your neighbor. Or, potentially, yourself.
Memories, events, moments in our lives can become attached to music in a way that is unique to the form. This song is one of those for me. This song is a summer night, vodka and cigarettes, sweaty skin and humid air.
What song reminds you of a specific moment in your life?
Chapter 6, page 68: "At the time, the education commissioner was recommended by the state board of education, but the Governor had to approve. My staff and I were involved in the selection process, which resulted in the naming of my first choice, Mike Moses. ... He had earned a reputation as an innovator, someone who was not afraid to try new things. I liked what he had done in Lubbock, where he advocated early intervention for at-risk students, and established an alternative boot-camp school staffed by drill instructors to try to redirect the lives of students with discipline problems."
Blink. Blink. Whut. Blink.
[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.]
A federal court ruled this week that a Florida woman could sue her local Sheriff's department because, after being raped, the woman was denied the second dosage of the morning after pill by a prison guard who objected to it. The woman, identified only as R.W., sought help at a clinic after being raped and was prescribed the pill as a precaution. When the police investigated the rape, they discovered an unrelated warrant for R.W.'s arrest and took her into custody. R.W. was then denied the second pill by a prison guard, Michele Spinelli, who said the pill violated her religious beliefs. Florida has a religious conscience clause, which allows health providers to deny certain treatments or procedures if they have moral objections.
US District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich had ruled in March that the sheriff was improperly named as a defendant, but yesterday, in response to a revised complaint, she ruled that the Sheriff, David Gee, could be sued. She wrote, "Gee, as the representative of the municipality, promulgated no policy on anticonceptive medication and provided no guidance or supervision to Spinelli on the matter. Given that some entity must set policy for the government in each situation, plaintiff has rendered plausible the claim that Spinelli was designated the final policy-maker with respect to her decision to withhold anti-conceptive medication for religious reasons."
It's good news that R.W. is being allowed to pursue justice in this matter, but this case underlines why conscience clauses are wretched, sanctimonious shit in the first place. My rights end where yours begin. I have a right to take or not take emergency contraception myself based on my beliefs. I do not have a right to coerce anyone else to take or not take emergency contraception based on my beliefs. This is not a difficult concept.
We live in a pluralistic, diverse, secular democracy, not a homogeneous Christian Dominionist theocracy. Anyone who can't abide interacting with members of a multicultural community shouldn't have a state job. The end.
Conservative reaction to the SCOTUS' decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act has been predictably hyperbolic. I can't decide which is my favorite:
1. Politico: "In a closed door House GOP meeting Thursday, Indiana congressman and gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence likened the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Democratic health care law to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to several sources present."
or:
2. ABC News: "@sarahpalinusa Obama lied to the American people. Again. He said it wasn't a tax. Obama lies; freedom dies."
US President Barack Obama smiles while he walks towards Marine One on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington June 28, 2012. [Reuters Pictures]
Almost as soon as the ruling came down this morning, I suggested to Liss that we should start counting down to when the Koch Brothers-funded pundits would start decrying John Roberts as a Dirty Fucking Hippie, appointed by that definitely-not-a-conservative George W. Bush.
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) tweeted that he was "truly disappointed in Justice Roberts and others who allowed this assault on the Republic stand" -- and later deleted the tweet. Conservative writer Ben Shapiro tweeted, "Chief Justice Roberts was the worst part of the Bush legacy."
The sentiment was mirrored in the press, with The Daily Caller splashing: "ROBERTS REVOLTS! Chief Justice Roberts swings left." Founder and president of the Media Research Center Brent Bozell told the conservative online publication: "His reputation is forever stained in the eyes of conservatives, and there will be no rehabilitating of it. He will be seen as a traitor to his philosophy.”
If the U.S. political scale now rates Justice John Roberts as "left," then I guess Barack Obama really is a socialist. Of course, that puts Ronald Reagan somewhere near Nikita Kruschev, and Dwight D. Eisenhower as a regular Che Guevara. Vive la Revolution mildly centrist reforms!
Is this real? I don't know. Maybe. Poe's law isn't helping. This purports to be from Page A19 of the June 14, 2012 edition of the La Jolla Light:
What is the definition of marriage?
It is now the year 2065. Chester Allman has just returned from the Moon Colony and makes his way back to his family's home in California. He is met at the door by his 30-year-old grandson, Michael, and Michael's five wives. Chester is bewildered and asks Michael for an explanation.
His grandson explains, "Remember back in the early century when several states changed the definition of marriage? They changed the law by legalizing marriage between two men or two women. Our two-century old definition of marriage was tossed aside. The precedent opened an easy way to further change the definition of marriage, to allow union between one man and two wives, then one woman and two husbands, and after that all hell broke loose! Nobody keeps track anymore."
Noting his grandfather's horrified look, Michael continues, "Why did you guys change things in the first place? Don't you see what damage you did? You should have kept it the way it was!"
"I can't believe all this is happening," Chester says, "but I'm tired and hungry."
"Sorry, Grandpa," Michael replies, "but food is scarce because of the atomic bombing. We have only intravenous feeding at breakfast and lunch."
Chester sighs, "What does your President have to say about all this?"
"You aren't up on the news, are you? Haven't you heard that our President is an American Indian and has put all of us whites on reservations?"
Chester angers, swears and turns to leave. Michael reaches out to detain him. "Wait, Grandpa! Wait! Where are you going?"
Chester calls over his shoulder, "I'm going to catch the next shuttle back to the Moon!"
Patricia Weber
La Jolla resident since 1953
Ummm... What? I don't know.
BUT!: Chester ALL-MAN! Moon bases! Atomic bombs! "Whites on reservations"! Is this an episode of The Twilight Zone? (No, that was better written.)
Why don't they have Fox News on the moon? (Or any news for that matter?) If Michael hates polygamy why does he have five wives? Is this set on one of those white reservations? What is the deal with the atomic bombs?
Patricia, really, you should have workshopped this more. Just sayin'. Also, you seem like kind of an ass.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww lolololol. I feel sooooooo bad for the poor man who is very disappointed that fewer people will go bankrupt and die because they lack healthcare coverage. What a sad day for him, I'm sure.
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