What—did you think James Franco wasn't going to take time off from doing every single other thing ever, all of them, ALL OF THE THINGS, to make, with the help of his (rumored) real-life girlfriend Ashley Benson, a lip-synch parody video of Justin Bieber's terrible song "Boyfriend," sending up the juxtaposition between Bieber's goody-goody image and creepy, obsessive lyrics? You're so weird. Of course he was going to do that. Because James Franco.
Video Description: James Franco, dressed like Justin Bieber, lip-synchs to "Boyfriend," while Ashley Benson dances around a poorly lit room and Franco shines a flashlight at her butt. Et cetera.
Saunders has now accused me of "belittling" the gang rape in India, merely by virtue of asserting there exists a rape culture in North America, which he deems "cultural appropriation." I observed that was a fairly reprehensible thing to do. For, you know, reasons.
Came his reply, and then mine:
@dougsaunders Oh, Doug. I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.
If you are deeply invested in debunking the concept of the rape culture, you are not anti-rape.
This message brought to you by arguing with our pal Doug Saunders on Twitter for the last hour—a man who does not even have a basic understanding of the concept of rape culture, but is nonetheless certain that it does not exist.
UPDATE:Jess graciously Storified my exchange with Saunders (thank you SO MUCH, Jess!), although it is incomplete, because Saunders (as has been noted already in comments) has already deleted a bunch of his tweets at me. And when I called Saunders out on it:
For someone so convinced of his rectitude, I'm surprised @dougsaunders has deleted most of his part of our exchange about the rape culture.
—feigning confusion to thus imply I might have imagined that he's deleted key parts of our public conversation in which he engaged in rape culture denialism.
Despite gaslighting me with a mystified "?", Saunders nevertheless took time to explain to @JoeZowghi that he "*systematically* deletes @-replies."
Which is manifest horseshit, because some of his @-replies to me are still on his TL, which I just screencapped:
It's patently obvious he selectively deleted parts of his exchange with me. And now he's being dishonest about the deletions.
Which would be amusing, if it weren't so profoundly unethical, given that this entire exchange began with Saunders inserting himself into a conversation I was having with @EmilyKnits about something he'd tweeted at her last night calling the rape culture a bygone relic, which he subsequently deleted. Whooooooooops I happened to screencap that one last night.
Here is a tweet to which I never received a reply:
@dougsaunders Doug, why so invested in debunking the existence of rape culture, even as you make no effort to understand what it really is?
[Image description: a Black and white cartoon of Snoopy riding in his airplane, dressed in his WW I fighter pilot garb. His thought bubble reads "Curse you, Red Baron!" as German biplanes fly in the background.Text reads: "Ride with Snoopy into the wildest dogfight ever!" Two white boys are talking. One of them, holding a Snoopy model kit, says, "Wow! What a great new kit from monogram! Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel!Comes with a battery-powered propeller you flip to start like a real plane!" The next panel reads: "easy and fun to build. Just snap together. You don't need glue!" Next panel ahs the narration "Minutes later..." over a picture of the two white boys, now holding a completed Snoopy biplane model. One says, "Looks groovy! And you don't even have to paint it! Here's where you write Snoopy's comments like 'Curse you, red Baron!" the final panel shows the model on the doghouse display stand, along with information about obtaining the kit.]
Last night, during some sporting event between two institutions about whom I couldn't care less, including one that is currently enjoying national indifference to its sports-related rape scandal because the victims are adult women, Jess caught a gross bit of banter between commentators Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit, who were leering over Katherine Webb and Dee Dee Bonner, who are respectively the girlfriend and mother of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron.
"If you're a youngster at Alabama, start getting the football out and start throwing it around the backyard with Pop," observed Musburger, after the men had drooled over the two women.
Jess makes all the great points about how demeaning the sexual objectification of Webb and Bonner is, and how potentially alienating to women (and men) watching.
I want to additionally note that, in one fell swoop, Musburger draws the boundaries around football as a space for straight men whose reward for throwing around a ball with "Pop" (because Ma would get her girl cooties all over it) is beautiful light-skinned women (because the Objectification Cam never lingers on dark-skinned girlfriends and dark-skinned mothers, while commentators sexualize them and talk about them like trophies).
Heterocentrism. Sexual objectification. Treating women like prized property to which men who are talented at ball-sports are entitled. Men throw around footballs together. Women are there to service the men. That is, if they're pretty enough. Dehumanization by pedestal or invisibility—ladies' choice! Either way, the point is that women have more in common with the football, a plaything, than they do with the men.
Yeah, it's a real mystery why male athletes imagine they can rape women and get away with it.
[Content Note: Transphobia; homophobia. Also: The linked pieces use male pronouns and a male name to refer to the trans female teacher. I have made a good faith effort to try to confirm hir preferences; the best I could find is that the HuffPo made an inquiry about pronoun/name usage and received no response. I will use gender neutral pronouns here and abbreviate hir first name to M.]
Shaker Brunocerous emails, which I am sharing with his permission:
A transgender teacher is suing the New York City Catholic school where [zie] worked for more than 30 years, claiming [zie] was wrongfully terminated for growing out [hir] hair, painting [hir] fingernails and being "worse than gay."
In a lawsuit, [M.] Krolikowski, 59, alleges that after 32 years of teaching at St. Francis Prep in Queens, N.Y., and receiving numerous accolades for [hir] work including leading students in a musical performance for Pope Benedict XVI, [zie] was fired last year after the parents of a ninth grader complained about [hir] appearance.
I remember a wonderful teacher, full of compassion, wit, understanding and respect. I am appalled that a school would treat such a profoundly talented and caring teacher with more than 30 years of experience and so many accolades in such a manner completely contrary to its stated mission and beliefs.
There is a petition here, requesting a formal apology from the school.
Thank you for reading. I'm almost in tears right now with the utter contempt I feel toward this injustice.
The behavior of the school is a total disgrace. And I am certainly not surprised to see a Catholic institution extend such intolerant bigotry toward a trans* teacher, but it is nonetheless sort of breathtaking that in the conveyance of one hostility, the school actually had to rank where being trans* fell on the hierarchy of Terrible Things. "Worse than gay. But not as bad as cannibalism!"
I guess the school just wanted to make sure that its gay students (and teachers) remember that they are hated, too.
I could go the entire rest of my life never having another person 'splain to me how male people raised in the rape culture probably don't even know they're rapists.
Sorry, rapesplainers. I just know too many male people who call absolute bullshit on that. And some of them are super-privileged male people who were raised in hypermasculine cultures, who played sports, who served in the military, who are exactly the sorts of men whose backgrounds are supposed to make them impervious to understanding the notion of consent.
Let us not misunderstand as an inability to respect consent and agency what is in reality an unwillingness.
What is your favorite Sigourney Weaver film? If you have not seen any of the nearly 70 films (!) in which she's appeared, "I've never seen a Sigourney Weaver film" is a perfectly cromulent answer, too.
The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on March 26 for the case against California's Proposition 8 and March 27 for oral arguments on the DOMA case.
Oh, dear lord: 101 reasons why you need an assault weapon.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned to work today following recovery from a concussion and a blood clot. She was give a welcome back gift by her staff.
Newly-elected Sen. Ted Cruiz says gun safety is unconstitutional.
Huell Howser — a California broadcasting legend for his various shows that have appeared on public broadcasting over the past couple of decades — has died.
$8.5 billion: The amount of a settlement 10 banks will have to pay over alleged foreclosure abuses against as many as 4.4 million borrowers, in a deal brokered by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The firms involved in Monday's agreement are Aurora, Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.
The deal covers borrowers whose homes were in foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, and is distinct from the $26 billion foreclosure settlement announced last year. That settlement was negotiated by state attorneys general, not federal banking regulators, and involved only five major banks: Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Ally Financial, formerly GMAC.
I guess I don't need to say that $8.5 billion is chump change for these megabanks, especially collectively. That'll learn 'em.
Here are some neat stories I've read recently about rescued cats and dogs who are heroes, for people and/or for other animals. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to neat rescued pet stories you've read recently in comments.
"I'm sure many of you are discouraged in the aftermath of the National Elections, especially in view of the moral and spiritual issues that took such a beating on November 6th. Nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat."—Dr. James Dobson, founder of conservative nightmare factory Focus on the Family, in his New Year missive to the devotees of his crud philosophy.
Shockingly, this admission was not followed by a thoughtful recantation of everything for which he has stood for nearly four decades, followed by a promise to pursue intensive soul-searching to uncover what possibly could have made him so deeply hateful, illiberal, authoritarian, and comprehensively wrong about everything, but instead a list of lies about the Democratic Party and its current President. Huh!
Welp, good luck with everything, Dr. Dobson! I hope you live long enough to celebrate 75 years of being terribly, horribly wrong!
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