Apropos of what I was saying earlier about social justice being a work in progress, Dave Weigel observes that, with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's appointment of Mo Cowan to fill John Kerry's vacated US Senate seat, this will be the first time ever that "the Senate will include more than one black member at the same time—Cowan and South Carolina's Tim Scott."
It takes a special sort of unicorn-scented ignorance to argue we live in a post-racial society when the US Senate has two whole black members serving at the same time! in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen.
Speaking of...
Cis Privilege Corner
[Content note: transphobia]
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a glut of opportunities to consider the ways in which society privileges cis bodies. More specifically, I’ve been reflected on how society privileges cis people’s medical needs.
A few years back, I was at the radiology department of a local hospital, because it was the third Sunday of the month and I played roller derby. (Seriously. Let’s hear it for the rad techs.) Anyhow, I’m about to get my chest or head or whatever x-rayed or scanned to make sure that everything is of the appropriate size and relative location, and I’m talking to the tech.
According to my driver’s license and my chart, I’m a woman, so I have to answer the usual questions, because if I’m pregnant and playing roller derby, it would be totally inappropriate to expose the fetus (or fetuses!) to radiation.
Now, there’s two basic ways a provider can approach that question.
The first is pretty straightforward:
“Is there any chance that you might be pregnant”
Women (and trans* men) tend, in my estimation to have a pretty good handle on this one. Do I have a uterus and ovaries that are still functioning as if I’m potentially fertile? Has anyone been putting semen down there? What do I use for birth control? When was my last period. Etcetera. Remember, the question isn’t are you pregnant, it’s is there any chance that you might be pregnant.
In my mind, this is generally the most straight-forward approach (although that’s not really the point of this story). Usually I answer that one with something between a laugh and a firm no.
On this particularly night, when this particular body part or parts was behaving suspiciously, the tech took the other approach:
“When was the last time you had your period?”
I suspect the people that came up with this approach have a narrow set of expectations ranging from “four weeks ago” to “oh, has it been six weeks?” to “I’M BLEEDING OUT OF MY SNATCH RIGHT NOW!” (I’ve always wanted to be able to say that to someone in a hospital.) Anyways, there are those of us who have slightly different answers to that question-- answers like “last year”, or “back when Duran Duran was a thing.”
One of my close friends who I regularly talked to when I had just came out once told me a story about this one time she was in the hospital. (Trans* ladies. Always in the hospital.) For obvious reasons, she liked to keep a pretty low profile about the whole FREAKY LADY WHO NEVER MENSTRATED! thing. So, when posed with the latter question, she answered two weeks. Anyhow, between the various tests they were administering to her and the miscellaneous Percocet-induced answers she was giving to various queries, “two weeks” turned out to be THE WRONG ANSWER.
Long story short, various VERY SERIOUS medical professionals were going to have to take VERY IMMEDIATE action to keep her vagina from exploding or whatever. She ended up having to come out to the doctors on the spot, which sucks because the only thing worse than coming out as trans* to strangers who have a buttload of power over you is coming out as trans* to the strangers who have a buttload of power over you that you’ve been lying to all this time.
My friend came up with a pretty kick-ass solution. From then on out, when asked about her body’s menstrual habits, she told folks that she was born without a uterus. Of course, she lived in a polite neighborhood and didn’t play roller derby, so this wasn’t a regular occurrence.
So I’m standing next to the nurses’ station in this ER, various body parts in various places, and the tech asks me to tell her the last time I’ve menstrated. As on a few previous occasions, I respond that I was born without a uterus.
Unlike on previous occasions, this particular tech’s eyes swelled as she involuntarily blurted out “OH MY GOSH I’M SO SORRY TO HEAR THAT!”
I know, right?
I doubt I would have gotten that kind of response (complete unprofessional as it was) had the tech realized I was trans*.
It’s not that I particularly want random strangers constantly feeling sorry for my abdomen. Still, that involuntary response betrayed an understanding that being a woman and being born without a uterus might, for some people, under some circumstances, be A THING.
Outside of a handful of close friends, allies, and fellow trans* people, I very, very rarely receive that level of visceral empathy.
If cis people regularly had to deal with having trans* bodies, you had better fucking believe that they would get that shit taken care of right the fuck away. Yet, because society views my gender and my gendered bodied as delusional and fake, my getting appropriate medical care is nigh impossible.
Nobody, and I mean nobody with anything resembling a position of power wants to take a stand in favor of giving trans* people appropriate health care. Even the normally wonkcrushworthy (it’s a word now) Elizabeth Warren recently said that providing a trans* woman with necessary medical care was “not a good use” of government money.
There’s no excuse for us not having universal health care in the United States. But even in much of the rest of the world, trans people don’t have access to appropriate health care, even when they’re able to pay for it themselves.
I regularly deal with health professionals who have various suggestions on how to improve my outlook. They usually give decent advice, but they tend to give the kind of advice that well-intentioned, privileged cis people like to give trans* people-- good advice considering that it’s premised on a universe that I can’t imagine.
Crossposted from A Cunt of One's Own
I Get Letters
[Content Note: Fat bias.]
You are fat!That was the entire email. You are fat! I think the exclamation point is what I love most about it. It's a real eureka moment.
Yes, Perceptive Correspondent. I am fat! Congratulations on your unassailable observational skills!
I will never cease to be amused by dudes (always dudes) who think that telling me I'm fat will be received as an insult. It has as much capacity to harm me as telling me I have blue eyes or brown hair. All it conveys is that someone else hates me because I'm fat. It does not have any power to make me hate myself.
Memorandum of the Day
Yesterday, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum on the Coordination of Policies and Programs to Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Girls Globally. In a White House blog post about the historic memorandum, Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Power note:
President Obama knows that promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls at home and abroad is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do, as Secretary Clinton has famously said. A growing body of evidence- and our own experience- shows us that families, communities and countries are more prosperous and secure when, as President Obama said this month, "you unleash the power of everyone, not just some". That's why we've taken steps to achieve that simple and profound goal, from establishing the White House Council on Women and Girls, to launching a multilateral initiative to expand women’s political and economic participation, to developing a new strategy to prevent and respond to violence against women, to implementing a national action plan to promote the inclusion of women in conflict resolution and peace processes, to focusing on women and girls for greater impact in our global health and food security initiatives.Incoming Secretary of State John Kerry has said he will continue to prioritize gender equality in US foreign policy, and I desperately hope he will honor the work that outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began.
And Secretary Clinton's leadership in integrating the advancement of women and girls into U.S. foreign policy has been indispensable. With the tireless assistance of our first-ever Ambassador at Large for Global Women's Issues, Melanne Verveer, she has elevated these issues in our diplomacy and ensured progress for women and societies for generations to come.
Today, President Obama took a critical step to institutionalize all these efforts by signing a Presidential Memorandum to strengthen and expand U.S. government capacity and coordination across all agencies to better promote gender equality and empower women and girls. In the Memorandum, President Obama reaffirmed that "promoting gender equality and advancing the status of all women and girls around the world remains one of the greatest unmet challenges of our time, and one that is vital to achieving our overall foreign policy objectives."
Obama signed the memorandum yesterday with Clinton at his side:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton watches as President Barack Obama signs a Presidential memorandum, "Coordination of Policies and Programs to Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Girls Globally," in the Oval Office, Jan. 20, 2013. [Official White House Photo by Pete Souza]Via the Office of the Spokesperson of the United States Department of State, Clinton's statement this morning on President Obama's signing of this important memorandum:
The Obama Administration has made it clear that advancing the rights of women and girls is critical to the foreign policy of the United States. This is a matter of national security as much as it is an issue of morality or fairness. President Obama's National Security Strategy explicitly recognizes that "countries are more peaceful and prosperous when women are accorded full and equal rights and opportunity. When those rights and opportunities are denied, countries lag behind."I can only begin to imagine how desperate Clinton is to see this work continue, too. Thank you, Madame Secretary, for laying the pathstones.
That's why I'm so pleased about the Presidential Memorandum that President Obama signed yesterday, which institutionalizes an elevated focus on global women’s issues at the State Department and USAID and ensures coordination on these issues across the federal government. And it is so important that incoming Secretary of State John Kerry has expressed his support for the continued elevation of these issues in our foreign policy.
As I have said many times, protecting and advancing the rights of women are critical to solving virtually every challenge we face as individual nations and as a community of nations. We have made great progress, but there is more to do. This is the unfinished business of the 21st Century, and it is essential that it remains central to our foreign policy for years to come.
In The News
[Content note: Gun violence, gun culture, homophobia]
Torsdag Nyheter:
Standoff drags into its third day as a responsible gun owner holds a boy hostage in his underground bunker.
Also: A prosecutor was gunned down outside a Texas courthouse. One suspect is believed to be responsibly wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Girl Power! "Young women are speaking out as to why AR-15 weapons are their weapon of choice."
Fatboy Slim: "Weapon Of Choice"
The Andrews Sisters' last surviving member has died.
An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 struck off the coast of Alaska.
Marriage equality foes suffer from fundraising shortfall. Whoops!
The gay dog has been saved. Yay!
Conservatives are launching a Facebook alternative, "without all the restrictions". Neat!
Post-Homophobic America
[Content Note: Homophobia.]
We have heard that we live in a post-racial America, and that we live in a post-feminist America. These things are not true, despite the insistence with which they are expressed by privileged people invested in the notion that racism and misogyny aren't Real Concerns anymore.
We hear less that we live in a post-homophobic America, at least in such explicit terms, but there is some notion attached with the increasing support for and legalization of same-sex marriage that the equality battle is largely won. This is partly a result of marriage equality having been positioned as the Final Frontier in equality by the most privileged members of the queer community, and mainly a result of straight people whose privilege inoculates them from the scope of how homophobia plays out in ways other than legal inequities.
This morning, I have read these three stories:
1. Niners CB Says Openly Gay Players Would Not Be Welcomed on the Team:
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver has made inflammatory comments regarding homosexuality in football just a few days before Super Bowl XLVII.2. Tennessee 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Now Requires Teachers to Inform Parents if Their Child is Gay:
Shock jock Artie Lange revealed he had interviewed Culliver at media day Tuesday and aired a segment on his show that night, where the player insisted that any gay players would not be welcome on the team.
"I don't do the gay guys man," said Culliver, whose Niners play the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. "I don't do that. No, we don't got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do.
"Can't be with that sweet stuff. Nah…can't be…in the locker room man. Nah."
When quizzed by Lange whether any homosexual athletes would need to keep their sexuality a secret in football, Culliver responded: "Yeah, come out 10 years later after that."
Tennessee's so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill died with the adjournment of the state assembly last year. But now the measure is back — with new, harsher requirements.3. Facebook Users Mount Campaign to Save 'Gay Dog' from Being Put Down by Tennessee Kill Shelter:
The bill, SB 234, still bars Tennessee teachers from discussing any facet of "non-heterosexual" sexuality with children in grades K-8. But the newest iteration also includes a provision requiring teachers or counselors to inform the parents of some students who identify themselves as LGBT. State Sen. Stacey Campfield (R), who authored the bill the first time around and again introduced it this time, calls out students who might be "at risk," but leaves the interpretation of that behavior to the teacher.
This healthy male American Bulldog mix is scheduled to be put down later today at the Rabies Control shelter in Jackson, Tennesee.That's just stuff I've read this morning.
"Not bc he is mean or bc he tears things up," says a Facebook user [who pays regular visits to the kill shelter looking for dogs to rescue]. No: "Because his owner says he's gay."
According to the [Facebooker], this unloved pooch was rejected because he was found "hunched [over]" another male dog.
"His owner threw him away bc he refuses to have a 'gay' dog!" she writes. "Don't let this gorgeous dog die [because] his owner is ignorant of normal dog behavior!"
Equality is frequently treated as some sort of race with a definitive endpoint marked by a single achievement. Equality for African Americans was declared upon the Emancipation Proclamation, upon the passage of the Civil Rights Act, upon the election of the nation's first black president. Equality for women was declared upon women getting the right to vote, upon the passage of Roe v. Wade, upon Geraldine Ferraro's appointment to a national ticket.
Social justice doesn't work this way.
It's an ongoing process of changing the culture, including but not limited to meaningful legal changes. But marriage equality does not protect gay athletes in locker rooms, or gay kids in public schools, or bigotry that manifests in dangerous, oppressive, and/or absurd ways, like rejecting "gay dogs."
It's a tantalizing idea that one bit of legislation, or three bits, or ten, can mark an endpoint to institutional oppression. But culture changes not with the stroke of a pen. That takes a fuckload of teaspoons.
Myths of Weight Loss
The wonderful Gina Kolata is in the New York Times today with a serious piece about the many false assumptions we hold about weight loss, abetted by bad (or incomplete) studies. I recommend reading the whole thing, but I do want to highlight this bit:
When [Dr. David B. Allison, director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham] talks about his findings [about the many myths and unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity] to scientists, they often say: "O.K., you've convinced us. But what can we do? We've got to do something." He replies that scientists have an ethical duty to make clear what is established and what is speculation. And while it is fine to recommend things like bike paths or weighing yourself daily, scientists must make sure they preface their advice with the caveat that these things seem sensible but have not been proven.Good for Dr. Allison! But I just love, ahem, how when he reports his findings about the dubiousness, at best, of many of the "facts" about fat, the immediate reaction is likely to be BUT WE'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING!
What a different culture it would be if fat people weren't a problem to be solved.
Happy Birthday, SKM!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
You look like a purveyor of the radical feminazi agendaaaaaaa!
And you smell like one, too!
(Mmm, jojoba!)
Every year on her birthday, SKM gets a cake featuring a Very Manly Man Offering Very Manly Birthday Wishes for her: Tom Selleck, Chuck Norris, Mr. T., Ron Swanson. This year, I figured I'd skip right to the
Happy Birthday, SKM!!! I adore you, lady. I hope you have a great day and a marvelous year.
Question of the Day
What album is currently getting the most airplay in your house?
If you are hearing-impaired and/or for any other reason can't or don't listen to music, please feel welcome to change your answer to some other form of media you're currently loving the heck out of.
Just No
I am still, days after Hillary Clinton's Benghazi testimony, reading garbage about how she "got away with" something, and also about how she cried when recounting the human loss of the attack. Crocodile tears, etc. All the usual variations on how every time Hillary Clinton sheds a tear it is to evade accountability by "evoking sympathy."
Just No: There is not a woman in America who is laboring under the enormous misapprehension that crying evokes sympathy. Even our most intimate partners are taught to be suspicious of our tears, to regard them as mere markers of our intent to manipulate. We know quite well that crying evokes contempt, especially from those disinclined from extending us sympathy irrespective of our expression of its need.
If you believe that Hillary Clinton is a sentient woman, no less the savvy sort of politician who would counterfeit emotion if she calculated it would win her support, then trust me when I tell you she does not cry to evoke sympathy.
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 30 January 2013: Photographer Betsy Seeton took this picture of golden-mantled ground squirrel having an intimate moment with a teddy bear in Colorado. [Betsy Seeton/Solent News]
Nina Simone: What Free Feels Like
Everybody is half-dead. Everybody avoids everybody. All over the place, in most situations, all the time. I know; I'm one of those everybodies.There is an entire post to be written about the connection between what Nina Simone is expressing here and this. But I don't want to write that post. I just want to let Simone's words work on me, and consider in what ways and spaces I have the privilege of feeling free, and in which ways and spaces I don't.
And to me, it is terrible. And so all I'm trying to do, all the time, is just to open people up, so they can feel themselves and let themselves be open to somebody else. That is all. That's it.
[edit]
I always thought that I was shaking people up, but now I want to go at it more, and I want to go at it more deliberately, and I want to go at it coldly. I want—I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I performed, I—I just want them to be to pieces.
[edit]
I want to go in that den of those elegant people with their old ideas, smugness—and just drive them insane.
[edit]
When I'm calm and cool and really got the antennae working, you know when to push and you know when to not. Nobody can tell ya, though—you have to feel it. In any situation between human beings. It's what makes a groove.
[edit; male interviewer asks her what freedom means]
What's free to me? Same thing it is to you. You tell me. ["No, you tell me." They both laugh.] Just a feeling. It's just a feeling. It's like how do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love. How are you going to tell anybody who has not been in love how it feels to be in love? You cannot do it to save your life. You can describe things, but you can't tell 'em. But you know it when it happens.
That's what I mean by free. I've had a couple of times onstage when I really felt free. And that's something else! That's really something else! Like all, all, like, like— I'll tell ya what freedom is to me: No fear! I mean, really—no fear. If I could have that half of my life...no fear.
Lots of children have no fear. That's the closest way—that's the only way I can describe it. That's not all of it. But it is something to really...really feel. I— [looks thoughtful; shakes her head and maybe chokes up a little] Wow. Like a new way of seeing. Like a new way of seeing something!
[Via Schmutzie.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by apples.
Recommended Reading:
Fall: The HAES® Files: On Ethics [Content Note: Fat hatred; bullying.]
Jorge: A Painfully Ironic Day for Boy Whose Dad Awaits Deportation
Lawrence: Vast Majority of Wage Earners Are Working Harder, and for Not Much More
Annie-Rose: Missouri Bill Would Require All First Graders to Take NRA-Sponsored Gun Class
Jenn: Reflecting on the Presidential Inauguration
karoli: 15-Year Old Performer at Obama's Inaugural Killed by Gunfire
FMF News: Malala Yousafzai Approaching Final Surgeries [Content Note: Violence.]
Lisa: Race, Rehabilitation, and the Private Prison Industry
Andy: Gay Marriage Foes Deep in Debt, Struggling to Meet Supreme Court Costs
Taegan: Fox News Ratings Plummet
Laura: Fly Me Away: Pilots and Volunteers Unite to Rescue Animals
Parks & Rec: The Manliest Banana You Will Ever See
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Blog Note
It's not just you: Comments have been glitchy all week. Comments appear to post to the page, then disappear and reappear, or there's a big lag in their posting to the page. I've notified Disqus, and hopefully it will be resolved soon. In the meantime, please be assured we're not deleting comments (except where there are serious violations of the commenting policy, natch). I apologize for the inconvenience.
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Opening Statement at the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Gun Violence
[Content Note: Gun violence.]
Former Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at a public event in January of 2011, made this opening statement at the Senate Judiciary hearing on gun violence this morning:
Okay. Thank you for inviting me here today. This is an important conversation—for our children, for our communities, for Democrats and Republicans. Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important: Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children! We must do something! It's [sic] will be hard, but the time is NOW. You must act! Be bold; be courageous. Americans are counting on you! Thank you!Talk about brave women.
One of the most important things about Giffords showing up and speaking is that she is a reminder that statistics about gun deaths do not tell the whole story. Giffords survived. She survived. But she is forever changed. Her halting speech compels us to remember that gun violence is not just about those who die, children and adults, but about those who live, too.
Giffords' handwritten remarks, from which she was reading. [Via TP.]
* * *
Meanwhile...
LaPierre says gun owners everywhere were "torn to pieces" by what happened at Sandy Hook. Poor choice of words, sir.
— jennifer bendery (@jbendery) January 30, 2013
While a member of congress rhapsodizes about owning a murder machine, there's been another multi-victim shooting, in Phoenix this time.
— Amadi (@amaditalks) January 30, 2013
News of shooting in Phoenix interrupts news of shooting in Alabama interrupts news of gun hearing in DC
— Juliet Lapidos (@julietlapidos) January 30, 2013
Inaugural girl shot in Chicago, madman shoots school bus driver in AL, GA man kills driver for pulling into driveway, office shooting in AZ
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 30, 2013
There are no words.
