Ms. Olivia Twist, sound asleep.
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen.]
Chipsticks at The Obama Diary: "Brooks Kraft has won 'Political Photo of the Year' from the The White House News Photographers Association for this image of President Barack Obama speaking in the pouring rain during a campaign rally in Glen Allen, Va."I posted another great photo from that event last July.
Oscar Pistorius Charged with Murder
[Content Note: Gun violence; domestic violence.]
Oscar Pistorius, whose career I've followed with interest and about whom I've written previously, was charged today with the murder of Reeva Steenkamp, who was dating Pistorius.
Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs.Elsewhere, via Jess, there was speculation before the arrest that Pistorius may have mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder, but that does not appear to be the case.
Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said.
...South Africans were shocked at the killing. But while Pistorius captured the nation's attention with his Olympic quest, police said there was a recent history of problems involving him. Police spokeswoman Brigadier Denise Beukes said the incidents included "allegations of a domestic nature."
"I'm not going to elaborate on it but there have been incidents (at Pistorius' home)," Beukes said. Police in South Africa do not name suspects in crimes until they have appeared in court but Beukes said that the 26-year-old Pistorius was at his home at the time of the death of Steenkamp and "there is no other suspect involved."
My sincerest condolences to Steenkamp's family, friends, and colleagues. And my profound sympathy for the metric fuckton of apologia and victim-blaming which they will probably be obliged to navigate because their loved one was killed by a famous and admired man.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Guns; violence; terrorism.]
"Before I tell you how the NRA and our members are going to Stand And Fight politically and in the courts, let's acknowledge that all over this country, tens of millions of Americans are already preparing to Stand And Fight to protect their families and homes. These good Americans are prudently getting ready to protect themselves."—Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association and professional jackass, in the opening paragraphs of a piece for The Daily Caller, to which I'm not linking because fuck them, but it's easy enough to find if you're so inclined.
Executive Summary of the remainder of the article: Obama wants to take our guns! Criminals! Muslims! "Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It's not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival." We definitely have to assume the worst of every other human being, and be prepared to shoot ALL OF THEM! Liberal media! Second amendment! Activist judges! "Bloomberg, Soros, and the rest of their ilk." Give money to the NRA! Freedom-loving patriots! STAND AND FIGHT!
I am not afraid of dying at the hands of an Islamic terrorist. I am, however, very afraid of dying at the hands of a frightened neighbor amped up by alarmist rhetoric and armed with deadly weaponry, who shoots first and finds out later I was walking up the driveway to ask if this wandering cat with the homemade collar is their pet.
My Father, My Brother, My Husband, My Son
by Shaker Mod Ana Mardoll
[Content Note: Hostility to reproductive rights.]
In his State of the Union address this month, President Obama invoked—for what is officially now the eleventy-billionth time—the framing that our economy is stronger when "our wives, mothers, and daughters" can contribute to that economy without fear of discrimination and violence.
Liss has already written why that framing is reductive and misogynist for defining women in terms of their relationships, and how that framing subtly reinforces the idea that President Obama is speaking to men about their wives, mothers, and daughters. And that this choice to address men over women is particularly problematic for many reasons—not the least being that for a number of the women in this country who both support Obama and choose to identify as the wives-mothers-and-daughters of men, not all of those men support Obama and his policies in the first place. Which means that for these women, Obama is talking over his supporters in order to address people who do not support him now and never have.
I am one of those women.
I am the daughter of a man who does not support President Obama.
I am the wife of a man who does not support President Obama.
I am the step-mother of a man who does not support President Obama.
I am the sister of a man who does not support President Obama.
I am all of these things. I am a Democratic woman in an otherwise Republican/Libertarian family, and not a single one of my male relatives supports President Obama or his policies.
My family, much like my vote, is mine. I decide, every day of my life, what I will choose to put up with and what I will not. I weigh costs and benefits and I make decisions. I assert and defend my boundaries to my family members about what I am willing to talk about and listen to. I require my decisions about my boundaries to be respected by my family, just as I expect my decisions about my relationships to be respected by my friends and fellow feminists. Living in a sexist, racist, all-around-fucked-up culture means sometimes interacting with people who have absorbed that toxicity in various ways. And each of us, myself included, makes decisions about what, and when, and where, and how much we are willing and able to put up with.
I make the choice, on a daily basis, to act as daughter to a man who happens to be a Libertarian; to act as a sister to a man who happens to be a Republican; to act as wife to a man who happens to be a Republican; and to act as step-mother to a young man who happens to be a Republican. But though I make those choices, and though I expect those choices to be respected, I refuse to be defined by others in terms of those choices.
I feel that I understand why President Obama uses this framing. I imagine that he expects the women in his audience to already be on-board with things like "sexual harassment is bad" and "violence against women is not good". I expect that he thinks that the people he needs to convince and bring on-board are the people in the audience who are not women. And I think that he believes the best way to reach those people is to remind them that this isn't about violence against an amorphous scary mass of Unknown-and-Unknowable Women, but rather that this is about protecting the women that the men in the audience presumably care about. Most men, after all, have a wife or a mother or a daughter or a sister whom they would prefer not to see harmed. I believe that Obama is trying to personalize these issues for those members of the audience that are not automatically and axiomatically expected to be on his side, by virtue of being women to start with.
But one of the many problems with this is that this attempt at a bi-partisan reach across the aisle to opponents doesn't work. No matter how much Obama tries to link his policies with a better life for daughter-wife-mother-sister Ana Mardoll, my father and my husband and my step-son and my brother are not going to support Obama. They're not going to write their congresspersons and senators to ask them to support the Violence Against Women Act based on a sudden realization that violence against women affects all women, including their dear daughter-wife-mother-sister Ana.
Because politics in this country is played like a sporting match between two rival teams, anything that is associated with Obama and the Democratic party is automatically suspect for my Republican and Libertarian relatives—if Obama wants the VAWA to pass, then that must mean that there's something wrong with it. And if the Republican members of Congress and the Senate voted against it, then that just proves that it had a clause in there which was bad and needed to be opposed. That has been the Republican party line for as long as I can remember, and given that the party routinely tries to pass laws with names like "The Protection for Blessed Darling Angel Infants With Tiny Feet and Unicorn Farts Act" that will instead result in the unnecessary deaths of women, they've had a lot of practice in being able to project that kind of behavior onto their opponents—and Republican followers have had a lot of practice in believing that things like a "Violence Against Women Act" are unnecessary and redundant, that the act is political grandstanding at best and a sneaky run around due process at worst.
President Obama doesn't seem to understand or care that when he ignores and invisibles me in an attempt to appeal to my father, my brother, my husband, and my step-son to support his policies on the grounds that those policies benefit their beloved Ana, they aren't listening to him. They don't accept his framing that those policies help me and people like me; they instead assume that his attempt to link his policies to the actual woman in their actual life is merely manipulative, an attempt to redirect their feelings about me towards his politics and policies. Obama doesn't seem to understand or care that talking over his supporters—women like me—in order to address the unsympathetic men in their lives actively alienates women without earning him a single new supporter.
In effect, he's ignoring me in order to address men who ignore him in turn.
Discussing me as though I am an object not in the audience, and reducing me into a label—Mother-Daughter-Sister-Wife—profoundly alienates me from the conversation. For huge swaths of my day, I am not a mother or a daughter or a sister or a wife—I am a blogger or a worker or a driver or a taxpayer or a million other things which are vitally important to both me and my country. And when I do go home to the family I have made and the roles I have chosen to play, I still don't wish to be identified as those roles by the outside world because those roles are my business and my choice, and are not the business of any third-party observer. I am a daughter to my father, but I am not a Daughter with a capital-D. I do not wish to be defined in that way, and certainly not as part of national discourse about my rights as a person, and most especially not in a cultural setting where, only a few decades ago, I was effectively owned by my father or my brother or my husband. This framing does not exist in a vacuum.
Context matters. To my father, I am a daughter; to my employer, I am an employee; to my readers, I am a blogger. To my president, I wish to be a citizen or a resident or—better yet, shedding the political connotations of those complex words—a person. A person who lives in the community that my president has been elected to preside over, and a person who deserves bodily autonomy and safety from harassment and violence because I am a person in my own right rather than because my male owners and handlers agree that I deserve these things. I deserve—I demand—the right to be defined by others in terms that I am comfortable with, and not in terms that they choose to impose on me.
I am a person. Anything beyond that—what roles I choose to carry in whatever relationships I choose to maintain—should not be used to define and objectify me in political discourse. And that is why I have signed this petition asking my president to abandon this rhetorical device in favor of more inclusive language.
[Commenting Guidelines from Liss: Please note that judgment and criticism of Ana's, or fellow commenters', decisions regarding maintaining relationships with conservatives is both off-topic and unwelcome, and will be deleted.]
On Valentine's Day
I've been trying to write this piece on Valentine's Day all morning, and the more I work on it, the more of a muddled garbage disaster it becomes, lol.
So, instead: I have issues with Valentine's Day, as it is commonly regarded and publicly celebrated, because it prizes kyriarchetypical relationships and Others lots of people, and because it has also, at least in the US and aided by a metric fuckton of marketing, taken on a certain feel not dissimilar to the wedding day of a straight couple, i.e. a Day That Women Are Allowed to Matter. You, too, can make up for treating your female partner like garbage the rest of the year with a simple purchase of a gaudy bauble and some flowers for delivery on THIS SPECIAL DAY!
Also: I love Iain every day, and show him that every day. He does the same. And we don't celebrate Valentine's Day, because wev.
Discuss!
Petition Update
The petition asking the Obama administration to stop using the "wives, mothers, & daughters" rhetorical frame that defines women by our relationships to other people is now at 1,500+ signatures and counting. Thank you to everyone who has already signed and passed it on! We've still got plenty more teaspooning to do, but it's been a solid start.
If you haven't yet signed (and want to), you want find the petition here.
You COULD be great! All of you could! BLUB!
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about Purina's "I Could Be Great" advert, and how it ran like 97 million times during the Westminster Dog Show, and how I blubbed my face off every time. The other night, Iain and I were watching this year's Westminster, screeching stupidly for the Greyhound, and for the Australian Cattle Dog who looked so much like Zelly minus the Dorito ears, and they ran the commercial 97 million times again, and I literally got choked up every single time.
I don't know what the fuck it is about this commercial, lol. Iain was totes laughing at me (and I was laughing at myself), because every time it came on, I was all, "Oh noooooooo! Not again!" and the tears would roll as if it were the first time I was seeing it. I am not even joking that I'm getting all blubby writing this as I just think about the commercial and hear the song in my head!
I give up! I relinquish myself to this commercial. It totally owns me.
Video Description: A series of video clips of dogs set to Tony Rogers' song "Great."
The lyrics used in the advert are: To a point I was good / Tried to do stuff that I should / Tried to do what you said / Tried to sleep in my own bed / But my bones wouldn't rest / 'Til I put me to my test / And I remembered what you said / I could be great / So so great...
The clips are, in order (having made a good-faith effort with breed identification, I dearly hope this thread does not turn into a pedantic nitpicking session about my description): A brown shepherd-mix wagging its tail and grinning; a black and white Boston Terrier sitting on a couch like people; a black and white Chihuahua walking across the back of a couch; a grey and cream Husky (or maybe Malamute) puppy laying half in a water bowl; a tan and silver Yorkie perking up its ears; a red Shiba Inu playing with a ball; a white Maltese puppy in a pink bed; a fawn and white English Bulldog sleeping on its back; a golden-mix pawing at a Frisbee (I think) on a hardwood floor; another Yorkie cuddling up for a nap; a black and tan Dachshund-mix looking out a window; a black Scottish terrier retrieving a ball from the water; a tan terrier-mix leaping through the snow; a black and white and silver Australian Shepherd running in the grass; a lab-mix long-distance diving at a competition; a black and white Border Collie catching a Frisbee; a red and white terrier-mix leaping a fence; a white Labradoodle play-bows in the grass; a Vizsla puppy runs with floppy ears; a brown and white English Bulldog on a surfboard; a black shepherd-mix in a wheelchair goes for a walk; a black Newfoundland rescue dog jumps out of a helicopter into the ocean; a black and tan German Shepherd search and rescue dog walks through building wreckage; a yellow Lab search and rescue dog digs through snow; a white Silken Windhound therapy dog stands calmly being pet by an older woman; a Yorkie lies beside a man in a hospital or hospice bed; a black Lab guide dog walks with its person down the street; a yellow Lab high-fives its owner in an agility competition; a Husky welcomes home a servicemember by enthusiastically licking his face. Text onscreen: Inside every good dog is a great dog.
[Note: Even though this is an advert for a specific dog food, posting the ad is not an endorsement of Purina, and, in fact, I do not use Purina dog food. Please note that discussions of Purina's corporate practices and advocacy for specific pet diets, while worthy discussions, are off-topic for this thread.]
LOL!
Imani Gandy: "Marco Rubio is no savior to women. He's just a thirsty jerk."
"Thirsty jerk" is literally making me do that laugh where your face scrunches all up because it can't laugh hard enough.
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia]
Humping Day Is Here!
The Illinois Senate will vote tomorrow — Valentine's Day — on whether to legalize marriage equality. Fingers crossed!
The American Family Association doesn't want gay corpses in Arlington National Cemetery. Wow.
A sea slug that is able to detach, re-grow and then re-use its penis has surprised scientists. Obviously.
Is this true? Maybe? Maybe not. Pope Benedict resigned to avoid arrest and the seizure of the church's wealth.
Teen Tournament champion Leonard had the best Final Jeopardy answer ever. Awesome. Totally awesome.
Russian coach blames gays for Olympic wrestling being axed. Sorry, heteros! (Just kidding, we're not sorry.)
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has photographed a shiny, metallic-looking object that bears a passing resemblance to a door handle or a hood ornament. Neat!
Ha Ha Of Course They Do
Pat Garofalo at Think Progress: Top Republicans Oppose Obama's Call to Raise the Minimum Wage.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Gender essentialism; heterocentrism; disablism; rape culture.]
CNN: The lost art of offline dating.
At first glance, this might not be an obvious contender for the Worst Thing, because it almost looks like a run-of-the-mill garbage piece on dating in the modern age zzzzzzzzzzz. But there are a couple of real doozies, like:
Shifting gender roles are also contributing to the confusion experienced on first dates.Feminism has ruined love, blah yawn fart.
"Men are almost afraid of being in the role of pursuing because they don't want to be perceived as creepy," Battista said. "And successful, independent women still want men to step up. As a result, it's almost like a standoff."
And, as is typical of pieces that lament the digitalization of human connection, there's a lot of embedded disablism in the failure to recognize how integral online communication can be for people with disabilities who can't navigate traditional social venues.
(See also: People from marginalized communities who are isolated in small towns, et. al.)
Then there's this, according to dating coach and author Adam LoDolce, who has, "to help people overcome the anxiety of approaching someone new" made a film featuring his dating advice titled "Go Talk to Her":
"Online dating is one tool in the tool kit, but I think we as a society are seeing that there is still a real way to meet people."A real way to meet people. As opposed to meeting someone online, which isn't "real."
It is absurd that there is still a stigma attached to meeting people online (and let us note it's a stigma being perpetuated by someone hawking a dating video for men), when a significant number of relationships—of the romantic and non-romantic sort—are formed online. Iain and I met online 12 years ago in March: I'm pretty sure it's for real, y'all!
But the legitimacy of my relationship (and others like it) is less a concern to me than the understood implications of why online relationships aren't "real," which are centered around dishonesty and danger. There was a lot more hand-wringing about my going to meet Iain in person because we'd met online than there would have been we'd met at a coffee shop and I'd agreed to go on a date with him. (Approximately: A metric fuckton of hand-wringing vs. none.) But, realistically, neither proposition was inherently less safe than the other.
I did, however, have good reason to trust Iain: We spoke on a daily basis for months before we met; I had his telephone number and address, to which I'd sent packages he'd received; he happily trekked to an internet cafe to speak with me via webcam when he didn't have one at home. What measures he could take to ensure I knew to whom I was speaking, he took, without my even having to ask. Before we met in person, I knew his parents' names, his friends' names, his pet's name, where he worked, his favorite books, his birthday... More, way more, than I ever knew about someone with whom I went on a first date.
And, once upon a time, a person I'd been dating for months, after meeting in a "real way," raped me.
It's not, of course, that internet meetings cannot lead to heartbreak and even danger. They certainly can. But so can relationships formed in person. And creating some false division of "real" and "not real" relationships based on how one meets reinforces the pernicious lie that a stranger in a cafe is axiomatically safer than a stranger on the internet. Trust is not established sheerly by proximity.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by envelopes.
Recommended Reading:
Resistance: RIP Keiko Fukuda, 1913-2013 [Longtime readers may recall that Lauredhel shared a guest post on Keiko Fukuda at Shakesville in November 2009.]
Jessica: Practical Feminism with Nihal Saad Zaghloul
tressiemc: Rationalization of Higher Education: We're All Bureaucrats Now
FMF News: Brown University Includes Transgender Students in Health Plan
Cora: At Least 20 CIA Prisoners Still Missing
Jorge: [content note: violent racism] "Illegal Immigrant Hunting Permit" Stickers Sold in Colorado Gas Stations
Laura: Meet Piper, the One-Eyed Bulldog with a Passion for Painting
Jay Smooth: [video] Haters Don't Die, They Multiply (Return of the Little Hater)
And if you want to hear what Ted Nugent had to say about the SOTU, Andy's got video here.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
We're Paying
Last night, after the State of the Union, I was thinking about the part of the address in which President Obama said that we have "cleared away the rubble of crisis," followed shortly thereafter by the observation that we've had more than a decade of wage stagnation, and I began to consider all the ways in which nondiscretionary individual spending has increased while wages have flattened, and how that has created an ongoing crisis.
Mike the Mad Biologist gets at some of that here, noting: "For many people–and not just the poor–once you factor in higher housing prices, more rent extraction (all those damn fees), increasing insurance rates, as well as the 21st century accoutrements that keep you competitive in the job market (internet access, cell phone), most people are not [able to save]."
Mobile phones and home internet access are indeed things many people need to compete professionally, not only because they are key tools in finding a job, but also because they are requirements of keeping many jobs. Lots of employers require employees to maintain a mobile device and have off-site internet access, even though the employers are not paying for those things.
And online access is only one of many things for which we're paying now (those of us who can, even though many/most of us need them) that weren't part of a household budget 20 or 30 years ago.
A home PC or laptop is also a requirement of many employers, who are often not inclined to pay for those, either.
Cable/satellite television is no longer a luxury in some places: They're the only way to get TV, and, particularly if one doesn't have internet/mobile access, TV is still the primary means by which one can get information in emergencies, follow important local news stories, and find simple, basic shit like whether one needs to carry an umbrella on any given day.
There are many places in the US where water filters (not cheap) are not an indulgence, but a necessity because of deregulation that has left tap water with dangerous levels of undrinkable stuff. I still remember a post my friend Lance Mannion wrote fully one hundred years ago in which he observed: "Turning on the tap to get a drink of water is a political act if only because the water flows and is relatively clean because of decisions made by politicians who owe their jobs to political decisions made by us."
Et cetera.
We're paying for wage stagnation. And paying. And paying. If that isn't itself living in crisis, then it's living in the rubble.
Quote of the Day
"Unfortunately, I could not support the final, entire legislation that contains new provisions that could have potentially adverse consequences. Specifically, this bill would mandate the diversion of a portion of funding from domestic violence programs to sexual assault programs."—Senator Marco Rubio (R-Ehydrated), explaining why he could not in good conscience [sic] vote for the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
