Modà : "Come Un Pittore"
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Stephen Marche for Esquire: "The Contempt of Women." Actual subtitle: "The rise of men. And the whining of girls."
There's a lot wrong with this article, starting with the basic problem that Marche cannot (or will not) distinguish between contempt for men and contempt for expressions of patriarchy-compliant masculinity. That's not a semantic difference (unless you're an evo-psych gender essentialist, in which case you're just wrong). I am a tenured Professor of Contempt at Fuck U, and the first lesson in my 101 class is that contempt for people and contempt for their behavior are very different things.
The second lesson is that privileged people who don't want to be held accountable for their behavior like to accuse the marginalized people contemptuous of that behavior of being, instead, contemptuous of their personhood.
To deflect accountability, "men" becomes inextricable from "male privilege" (carefully aided by disappearing or dismissing all men who do not exhibit and/or share undiluted male privilege: gay/bi men, trans* men, feminist-allied men), and it is not the oppressive expressions and subjugating practices of male privilege for which women have understandable contempt, but men themselves.
Thus, we are terrible "misandrists," not critics of systemic oppression and the acts which facilitate it.
Of course, there are also some individual men whom some women hold in contempt, for legitimate reasons, but when your examples of "self-deprecating" male comics are Louis CK and Daniel Tosh, I don't guess legitimate contempt is a concept that exists in your paradigm.
(NB: Men who do rape humor are not "sharing in" women's alleged contempt for men. They are expressing profound contempt for women.)
I'm not going to spend a lot more time deconstructing the towering inferno of fuck that is this article (I'll leave that to you in comments), but I do want to note one other thing: The story about First Lady Michelle Obama "humiliating" President Barack Obama by saying, "He's a gifted man, but he's just a man," so often cited by male writers as evidence of what a bitch/ball-buster/bitch she is, is not about her contempt for him. (And you have to be a real asshole to image that any half of this couple has contempt for the other.) In fact, I don't think it's really about Barack Obama at all.
Every time we hear about how Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson met, we get the line about how she was his supervisor. She was ahead of him in her career. She, by all accounts, was the better student, more focused, more ambitious. And yet it's he who is the president. Maybe that comes down entirely to the fact that she didn't want it. But, after watching Hillary Clinton's campaign, can there be any doubt that, no matter how much she wanted it, it wouldn't have mattered?
Whether Michelle Obama wanted the presidency or not is really immaterial to her certain knowledge that she couldn't have had it, anyway. And when she says her husband is "a gifted man, but he's just a man," I don't only hear a wife humanizing her husband and keeping him humble in an affectionate way; I hear a woman who is herself extraordinarily gifted, but will always be considered "just a woman," fighting for equal space. As well she should.
That is not contempt for her husband. That is contempt for the opportunities she was not allowed to enjoy, the recognition she will never get.
Matthew: How about you? Is your life proving satisfactory? Apart from the great matter, of course.Take note, Mr. Marche.
Mary: Women like me don't have a life. We choose clothes and pick halls and work for charity and do the season. But, really, we're stuck in a waiting room until we marry.
Matthew: I've made you angry.
Mary: My life makes me angry. Not you.
Wow
Video Description: A young Japanese woman wearing a black-and-white patterned yukata says, "Hello. My name is Aibo. I'm Japanese. I will show you my beatbox." then does the most amazing human beatboxing I've ever seen/heard. According to her YouTube page, she's been beatboxing for two years.
[H/T to @allisonkilkenny, who got it from Sean Lennon.]
So This Happened Last Night
[Content Note: Violence; guns; self-harm.]
Last night, a couple miles from our house, more gun violence:
One man is dead and three are in custody at the Lake County Jail after they fled a home invasion in Porter County, crashed their car and led police on a foot chase near the Hobart Walmart. The incident Wednesday forced police to close portions U.S. 30 and Colorado Street to traffic.Whoops.
Porter County Police Lt. Larry LaFlower said the incident started when three men in a silver car robbed a house in the 100 block of South County Road 450W in Porter County around 5:04 p.m. They battered the 52-year-old homeowner, a woman, and stole an undetermined amount of cash and guns. She was treated at Porter hospital. The homeowner's neighbor, who was driving a navy blue GMC Sierra truck, pursued the men as they drove west on U.S. 30, and he kept police posted as to their location.
Around 5:18 p.m. Hobart Police Chief Jeff White said the four men took a sharp right turn onto Colorado Street at a high rate of speed and crashed into three vehicles, including an SUV driven by an FBI agent.
At that point, three men jumped out and ran, while the FBI took the fourth into custody. The victim's neighbor continued to pursue them in his truck, so they shot at him, "striking him in the hand and shattering the windshield and the back window." Police eventually apprehended two more of the men.
The third man ran across U.S. 30 toward B.C. Osaka restaurant, with another FBI agent in pursuit, and fired his weapon twice before turning it on himself.He died at the scene.
Remember how I mentioned being momentarily frightened while at the movies last weekend? Before A, M, Iain, and I went to the movies, we had lunch at B.C. Osaka.
This incident won't even register in the national news, not even a blip. It's one of many like it all over the country, increasing in number. And, still, we refuse to have a serious conversation about gun reform.
GOOD MORNING!
[Content Note: Fat hatred; misogyny.]
— Sodlid Nogard Dab (@SodlidNogardDab) August 9, 2012
@shakestweetz The PS2 was the best console you fat fucking cunt.
I got this tweet this morning. I wrote the Fat Princess post, to the post-script of which it is a response ("P.S. The PS2 sucked."), four years ago.
I still get emails about that post, too.
Which I find pretty hilarious considering that gamer dudez showed up in droves to tell me to "get over it" when I criticized the game.
Open Thread
Hosted by: "I'm sorry I lied to you. But you lied to me, too. You told me that everyone was alike and deserved a fair break, but you meant everyone who was like you."
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five Favorite Places You've Visited. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Liss: Can you die of a smell? Because Tils just took a shit that I'm pretty sure is capable of killing me.
Deeks: LOLOLOL!!!
Liss: Really stinky dogshit is bad, but it's just bad in the way really stinky people shit is bad. Really stinky catshit is otherworldly. It's like their buttholes momentarily turn into wormholes delivering fecal evil from the bowels of another dimension.
Deeks: How does that happen? They eat the same fucking thing every day!
Liss: Right? What the fuck?
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 7 August 2012: A squirrel trapped in a streethole cover is seen in Isenhagen, northern Germany. Police managed to free the animal by using olive oil. [Police Hanover/AP]Awwwww, poor wee fing, lol! Yay for olive oil.
Yay for Things!
Transgender Discrimination Barred Under ACA:
In response to letters from LGBTQ health and advocacy groups, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced in a letter made public yesterday that, under the Affordable Care Act, discrimination based on gender identity will not be tolerated. Leon Rodriguez, director of HHS' Office for Civil Rights, stated in a written response to the groups that federally-funded health care programs are barred from discriminating against transgender people. This inclusion does not, however, mean that trans-specific health care, such as transition-related procedures, will be included in coverage.So! After I saw this last night, I emailed Eastsidekate about it and we talked about it some, and I was all "LOL YER ENFORCEMENT?" and Kate was all, "THX FOR NOTHING!" and then we covered ourselves in ice cream and ate it off each other's heads.
The National Center for Transgender Equality's executive director Mara Keisling notes that one in five transgender people report being turned away from a health care provider. "HHS affirms our position that these abuses are now clearly illegal," said Keisling. She remarked that this position will hopefully be a tool to get to the next step of covering trans-specific health care.
Trans and health care advocates assert that it is important for trans people to know their rights [pdf] regarding health care, and to contact HHS when they experience discrimination. The HHS Office of Civil Rights will soon release guidelines for how to respond to health care discrimination. Trans activist Jos Truitt writes, "a law specifically targeting [trans] discrimination would be a valuable next step, and showing that the need exists could help make this a reality."
Because today's HER BIRTHDAY!
Okay, in all seriousness, this is, as Kate aptly described it an one of her emails, "good-ish, but meaningless." Which means, by way of an inexact parallel, that it's sort of like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act—or, more specifically, the framing around the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which tends to overstate what it actually accomplished. Which was increasing the statute of limitations in which women who discover they are being paid unequally can sue, but not really ending unequal pay.
Similarly, this provision is good news in the sense that it provides recourse for trans* people who experience discrimination, but note the distinction between "guidelines for how to respond to health care discrimination" (which are forthcoming) and guidelines for preventing health care discrimination (which evidently are not).
What would be more meaningful is if the HHS barred discrimination and delineated good-faith practices for health practitioners, instead of barring discrimination and telling trans* people to report back if and when they're still denied healthcare.
As it stands, the policy is simply incomplete.
On Twitter last night, Kate drily noted: "My wife and I got a letter from NYS after I spent a night in my car while she was in the ER. Anti-discrimination rules aren't all bad. If that happened again because I'm trans, I'd be entitled to *two* letters."
Yeah.
I guess what it boils down to is this: As a start, it's a good one. As a best effort at a comprehensive policy, it's shit.
We'll have to wait and see what the HHS thinks it is.
The Boundary Foundry
[Content Note: Boundaries; rape culture.]
This is a series about forging boundaries.
But let me back up a bit.
* * *
In June, I read this great piece on boundaries by Jim Hines. I hope and imagine Jim won't be insulted if I note that his piece wasn't revolutionary for me (which doesn't make it any less meaningful); I've been writing about the rape culture myself for almost a decade now, and many people before both of us have made the point that we all have the right to say no. But it was reading his piece, specifically, that I first had the thought: Not only do we all have the right to say no; we all have the right to set boundaries.
That might seem like a semantic distinction, but before someone can acknowledge, no less exercise, hir right to say no, zie must first believe zie has the right to object in the first place.
It's good and important and necessary to tell people who object to being treated in a way they don't want to be treated that they have a right to voice that objection.
But what about those of us who are so inured to being mistreated, who have not only been discouraged from communicating any negative emotion about abuse but admonished that even having those feelings is bad, wrong, punishable?
You have the right to want to say no. You have the right to want to set boundaries. And you have the right to set them.
* * *
A 16-year-old Shaker from a small town in the US asks me if I could write more about boundaries. She doesn't know how to set them, or where. I ask her where her life feels bad. "Everywhere," she replies.
* * *
Part of my commitment to dismantling the rape culture has been setting boundaries, for myself and this community, even if it is a teaspoon in an ocean.
It turns out that you make a lot of people unhappy when you draw boundaries and defend them.
Which, of course, is a product of the rape culture, which encourages hostility to other people's boundaries, sexual or otherwise. It's all part of the same continuum, part of the same endemic hostility to the notions of consent, autonomy; hostility to individual boundaries, privacy, and dignity; hostility to people who demand those things for themselves and others.
It's so deep in all of us. Sometimes we don't even realize we do it. We're mad about someone drawing a line in a place we don't like, and we decide it is because they are mean, because they are unfair, because they are weak, because they are broken, because they are something that gives us an excuse to not have to examine our own failure to respect their communicated boundary.
I've been that mad person. And I have a lot of people mad at me a lot of the time for drawing lines in places they don't like.
I hate making people unhappy. But I hate upholding the rape culture even more.
And here's a funny thing about public boundaries-drawing: It's hard enough to say no when there aren't thousands of people willing to tell you how terrible you are for doing it. And yet it's easier to say no when there are thousands of people in addition to yourself who need you to do it.
There is something empowering about community, even around personal boundaries. We can do more empowering of that sort here. Has been a thought. Rattling around the lint trap.
* * *
Increasingly, I get emails from Shakers on the subject of boundaries. Sometimes the emailers are grateful, thanking me for a public example of setting and maintaining boundaries. Those messages are particularly meaningful to me. Setting and maintaining boundaries (and the consequences for failing to respect them), personally and professionally, privately and publicly, is something that was once very difficult for me to do—even in this space, as longtime readers can attest.
Mostly, the emailers are advice-seeking. I try to answer all of them. A lot of the same questions come up over and over. A lot of times, I think: "This needs to be a post."
* * *
So here we are. This is a series about defining, communicating, and holding firm boundaries. Sometimes I will just write on a general idea. But mostly I want to answer your questions and address issues around boundaries in your lives, with which you want help, back-up, the reinforcing strength of community. Email me.
Please let me know in your email how you'd like me to credit you (e.g. Disqus handle, first name, initials, topic-specific pseudonym).
Here we go.
Daily Dose of Cute
"Dude, I am sooooooo baked."
I do not even know how Zelly got into this odd position, nor how she sent all the couch cushions akimbo, but this is what she looked like when I found her waking up from her mid-morning snooze, lol.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by candy.
Recommended Reading:
Mat: How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking
Pam: I Can't Speak, But That Doesn't Mean I Can't Hear or Think... [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of disablism.]
Jacquie: "I have my own urgent message for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and President Obama: Until my family stops being the target of your failed immigration enforcement programs, I will not send you a dime."
Fannie: Quote of the Day [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of homophobia.]
Resistance: RIP Dr. Donald Liu
Andy: Michigan Billionaire Gives $325K to Fight Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment in Minnesota
Steve: Blackwater's Paltry Punishment
MM: Fox's Gutfeld: Obama Is "Out of the Closet" and "Officially Gay for Class Warfare" [video]
BF: Hillary Clinton on the Dance Floor in South Africa [video]
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Because I Know How Much Liss Loves a Good Jesus on a Tortilla Story
[Click to
Here's a true story: A mysterious angel delivers tacos to Ernesto Garza's table at a local restaurant and as he's about to kill a fly he notices that Jesus has put His face on one of his tortillas, in a sort of reverse transubstantiation type thing. Newspapers are notified. Pictures are taken. An entertainment reporter quips "The Lord works in mysterious, and sometimes delicious, ways." Deeky gives an entertainment reporter a dismissive look.
Speaking of dismissive, when I first looked at the burnt area of the tortilla, I thought it was an image of a bulldog, but then realized I was looking at the wrong part of the burn. I hate when that happens. Anyway, I think the face looks more like Charles Manson or maybe Roland Orzabal than Jesus. I hate when that happens.
Quote of the Day
"We had a moment of silence in honor of the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple. I noted that it was a tragedy for many, many reasons. Among them are the fact that people, the sheik people, are among the most peaceable and loving individuals you can imagine, as is their faith."—Republican presidential candidate and undiluted fuckbrain Mitt Romney, at a fundraiser in Des Moines last night.
Don't worry, though: His spokesperson explained that Romney just "mispronounced similar sounding words" and wasn't trying to offend Sikhs.
Phew!
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Racism; misogyny.]
Sally Jenkins' latest column for the Washington Post is headlined: "Gabby Douglas needs to avoid letting others set her narrative for her."
There is, inexplicably, no subtitle reading: "But should definitely let Sally Jenkins publicly lecture her in a super condescending way."
Instead, there's just a giant photo of all-around champion Gabby Douglas falling off the balance beam, followed by garbage like this:
Douglas is black, her coach is Chinese. She's living with a white family in Iowa, and her captain on the USA gymnastics team is Jewish and danced to a gold medal in the floor exercise to Hava Nagila.That is some amazing mind-reading, unless Jenkins is privy to information about Douglas' thoughts that the rest of us are not, since there's a funny dearth of quotes from Douglas herself about her alleged "colorblindness."
Douglas genuinely doesn't see color — it's not her first thought.
Granted, I've not read every interview Douglas has ever given, but, in recent days, when I have read Douglas speaking on or near the subject of race, it has not been to declare her indifference as much as it's been, "Are you kidding me? I just made history. And you're focusing on my hair?"
To fail to see that as a comment demonstrative of a young woman who has to think about race, is obliged to have her race be one of her first thoughts, is to be a insulated by privilege and/or to be so deeply invested in the narrative of "colorblindness" that one ignores all evidence to its contrary.
The article gets worse from there.
Jenkins sanctimoniously compliments Douglas for believing in herself despite the pervasive whiteness of her sport, as if what's really holding black gymnasts back is their own weakness, as if the fact that it took talent enormous enough to win the all-around title, major familial sacrifices, and profound personal strength to overcome institutional barriers to participation somehow proves that anyone can do it if only they really try, rather than underscoring that the system is broken.
But these are the narratives of black exceptionalism that white people love: The black athlete who overcame terrible odds to become a champion. Proof that all you need is bootstraps. Soothing reassurance that we never have to change. After all, not having white privilege didn't stop that one extraordinary person so that means everyone else can do it, too, if they really want to.
Finally, Jenkins appropriates quotes from African-American former gymnast Dominique Dawes in order to lecture Douglas on how to be a champion. I mean, obviously it would just be unseemly for Jenkins to lecture her herself, so she passive-aggressively utilizes Dawes, whose encouragements to Douglas to "be herself, be genuine, and not try to be what other people think America wants or will gravitate to," are given an entirely different (disingenuous) meaning following on Jenkins insistence that Douglas "doesn't see color."
Jenkins is literally using the words of Dawes, who wept with excitement and pride and joy at Douglas' achievement, to admonish Douglas to not let herself be defined as a woman of color in gymnastics.
Which is gross on a lot of different levels, but perhaps none so much as its implicit argument that being defined as a woman of color, in gymnastics or anything else, is undesirable.
[H/T to @graceishuman, whose just-published piece "The Media's Gabby Douglas Problem" is highly recommended reading.]
