[Content note: Homophobia, racism, misogyny]
Jodie Foster Once Starred in Freaky Friday:
The Obama administration is scheduled to file an amicus brief supporting gay Californians' right to marry.
Yeah, sequestration is a feature, not a bug, for Republicans.
Europe's economy is a wreck. Obviously.
And so begins the robot apocalypse.
David Bowie's new album is available for streaming free on iTunes today.
Oof. This guy.
A Florida man fell into a sinkhole that opened suddenly beneath the bedroom of his suburban Tampa home. Scary!
Hey everyone! Mitt Romney is doing okay! You all can stop worrying now!
This will make you cry. But in a good way.
Sean Duffy, Wisconsin Republican, is a raging douchebag.
In The News
Daily Dose of Cute
[Content Note: The images and video below include Matilda chomping at a toy with visible fangs. She's just playing, but if cat aggression is triggering or otherwise problematic for you, you should skip this one.]
Matilda and Her Purse
Recently, I got a pair of earrings (or something) from Etsy, which were delivered in small, gold, lamé bag with a drawstring. Matilda loves lamé almost as much as she loves ribbons, so she immediately claimed this bag as hers and now carries it around with her like a fancy lady. She also wants me to play with her and her purse twenty-seven hours a day, because, even though she is 11, she is still as playful as a kitten given a ribbon or bit of lamé is on offer.
And it's not like she wants to play a little bit. SHE WANTS TO PLAY OMG LET'S PLAY I WILL DESTROY MY PURSE BECAUSE I LOVE IT SO MUCH! She wants to play endlessly, and hard. Something about the material just drives her wild. She rears up on her back legs, looking for all the world like a little blue-eyed Wookie, and punches the purse like it's a speed-bag, and bites at the drawstring making loud NOMNOM noises. It turns her into the cutest demon ever, basically.
If you can view video, here is a video of me playing with Tils and her purse the other day. Every time she turns her head to chomp on the string and makes that zany face, it cracks me up. This, by the way, was after I'd already been playing with her for at least a half hour. And, at the end, she just looks at me like, "Welp, come on, Two-Legs, let's go. KEEP THE GOOD TIMES ROLLING!"
Two hours later, she was back, sitting next to me with her purse clutched between her paws, giving me plaintive looks and yowling at me to play with her again. Which naturally I accommodated because love.
Presidential Proclamation: Women's History Month
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release February 28, 2013
------------------------------------------------------
WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH, 2013
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
For more than two centuries, our Nation has grown under the simple creed that each of us is created equal. It is a notion that makes America unlike any other place on earth -- a country where no matter where you come from or what you look like, you can go as far as your talents will take you.
Women's History Month is a time to remember those who fought to make that freedom as real for our daughters as for our sons. Written out of the promise of the franchise, they were women who reached up to close the gap between what America was and what it could be. They were driven by a faith that our Union could extend true equality to every citizen willing to claim it. Year after year, visionary women met and marched and mobilized to prove what should have been self-evident. They grew a meeting at Seneca Falls into a movement that touched every community and took on our highest institutions. And after decades of slow, steady, extraordinary progress, women have written equal opportunity into the law again and again, giving generations of girls a future worthy of their potential.
That legacy of change is all around us. Women are nearly half of our Nation's workforce and more than half of our college graduates. But even now, too many women feel the weight of discrimination on their shoulders. They face a pay gap at work, or higher premiums for health insurance, or inadequate options for family leave. These issues affect all of us, and failing to address them holds our country back.
That is why my Administration has made the needs of women and girls a priority since day one -- from signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to helping ensure women are represented among tomorrow's top scientists and engineers. It is why we secured stronger protections and more preventive services for women under the Affordable Care Act. It is why we have fought for greater workplace flexibility, access to capital and training for women-owned businesses, and equal pay for equal work. And it is why we have taken action to reduce violence against women at home and abroad, and to empower women around the world with full political and economic opportunity.
Meeting those challenges will not be easy. But our history shows that when we couple grit and ingenuity with our basic beliefs, there is no barrier we cannot overcome. We can stay true to our founding creed that in America, all things should be possible for all people. That spirit is what called our mothers and grandmothers to fight for a world where no wall or ceiling could keep their daughters from their dreams. And today, as we take on the defining issues of our time, America looks to the next generation of movers and marchers to lead the way.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2013 as Women's History Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month and to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, 2013, with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. I also invite all Americans to visit www.WomensHistoryMonth.gov to learn more about the generations of women who have shaped our history.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.
# # #
Okay. Well. Broken record is a broken record.
1. He's still batting 1000 on failing to mention reproductive rights.
This is not a small thing, because Women's History in the United States would look very different without reproductive rights, and there are women all over the nation whose personal histories are currently being written and defined by their access to or lack of access to a full spectrum of reproductive options.
It's genuinely laughable to talk about "grit and ingenuity" and then utterly lack the gumption to talk frankly about women's reproductive health because people who will never vote for you and think Women's History Month is a fucking punchline might object.
2. He's also found a WHOLE NEW WAY of defining women relationally (sign the petition!) in a way that disappears large groups of women: "We can stay true to our founding creed that in America, all things should be possible for all people. That spirit is what called our mothers and grandmothers to fight for a world where no wall or ceiling could keep their daughters from their dreams."
I do not have children. I will never be anyone's mother, nor anyone's grandmother. My contributions to Women's History are not less valuable because I am not fighting this fight for my daughters.
This is also not a small thing, because Women's History in the United States would look very different if women who have chosen not to or cannot parent did not participate in feminism, not because we're special fucking snowflakes who Do Feminism Better, but because there are millions of us, and our contributions deserve recognition, too.
"All things should be possible for all people." I agree. It is possible to stop defining women exclusively by their relationship to other people, Mr. President. I invite you to give it a try.
Today Begins the Sequester
I don't even know what to say, frankly, besides fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck:
Today is the day lawmakers have known about since August 2011: the day those forced federal spending cuts kick in.President Obama is scheduled to meet with Congressional leaders for an 11th hour meeting this morning to try to avoid going over the
This Friday is also a day many never expected would come. After all, the cuts known as sequestration were designed to be so draconian that lawmakers would be forced to compromise and avoid them.
But they haven't, and as lawmakers left Washington to begin their weekend on Thursday, so left any prospect of avoiding the cuts that President Barack Obama and his administration have warned will lead to long airport lines and fewer air traffic safety controllers; federal government furloughs and layoffs; cuts to food inspection and border security programs; and education funding decreases that will shut young students out of Head Start programs.
For all of the dire warnings, Obama acknowledged Wednesday that the cuts are "not a cliff, but it is a tumble downward." He'll set the cuts in motion on Friday with a stroke of his pen.
...After Obama signs the order, the Office of Management and Budget will send to Congress a detailed accounting of the cuts – how much from which agencies and which accounts. Every "program, project and activity" has to be trimmed without regard for what it is, according to the OMB.
Those who are employed by the government or rely on federal agencies' spending are expected to feel the effects first. From there, the effects of the sequester will ripple outward across the economy.
"I'm happy to discuss other ideas to keep our commitment to reducing Washington spending at today's meeting," [Senate Minority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell] said. "But there will be no last-minute, back-room deal and absolutely no agreement to increase taxes."Instead of the richest among us paying a little bit more, the poorest among us will suffer to subsidize their privilege.
There is no end to conservatives' greed.
FYI
There still seems to be some confusion about whether body policing, health policing, diagnosing fat people by their appearance, giving unsolicited advice to people with disabilities, and related asserted governance of others' bodies is allowed here. It is not.
I hope we're clear on that now.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker StarGlory: "What is the best thing you've ever gotten in the mail?"
I'm sure everyone already knows my answer to this one.
Launder That Fat Away, Ladies!
[Content Note: Fat hatred; racism; classism.]
So, there is a study going around the internet which makes the totally-fresh and completely-new claim that American women are fat because we spend all day working at desk jobs and all night watching television to unwind, as opposed to fifty years ago when life was just like Leave It To Beaver and women never worked outside the home and spent all day wrestling with forty-pound vacuum cleaners:
One reason so many American women are overweight may be that we are vacuuming and doing laundry less often, according to a new study that, while scrupulously even-handed, is likely to stir controversy and emotions.Right off the bat, I'm just going to set aside the whole problematic aspect of using the words "a majority of women" when what was actually meant is "a portion of the population, composed predominantly of upper-class, wealthy, married, white women" when discussing what kind of work women did or didn't do in the 1960s. I'm just going to put a little pin labeled "racist and classist assumptions" and set that to the side over there.
..."Fifty years ago, a majority of women did not work outside of the home," said Edward Archer, a research fellow with the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and lead author of the new study.
So, in collaboration with many of the authors of the earlier study of occupational physical activity, Dr. Archer set out to find data about how women had once spent their hours at home and whether and how their patterns of movement had changed over the years.
I'm additionally going to set aside the ridiculously terrible science of measuring one tiny aspect of the differences in the lives of American Women Of The 1960s versus American Women Of The 2010s -- specifically, how much time they report doing housework -- and using that one tiny aspect to try to explain a supposed trend of weight gain as though a correlation between the two implies any sort of causation and as though there cannot possibly be any other difference between these two groups of people, and as though controlling for those differences (which totes don't exist anyway!) is so much optional nonsense. And additionally as though self-reporting surveys are the epitome of accurate scientific measurement. I'm just going to stick a little pin labeled "horrifically soft science" in that bundle of awful and set it off to the side with the other.
And I'm also going to set aside the laughable choice of meticulously measuring how much time a selection of women spent on "housework" while deliberately choosing to ignore time spent doing childcare activities, as though the work done by women homemakers consists entirely of "cleaning, cooking, and doing laundry" and nothing else and as though the time that modern women save as a result of technological advances in laundry methods isn't and couldn't possibly be reinvested into other types of active housework beyond "cleaning, cooking, and doing laundry". That one is getting a little pin called "mendacious bullshit" and set off to the side with its cousins.
So, okay? I'm just going to put all that to the side for just a moment.
Because I want to share this anecdote from Barbara Ehrenreich (who I want to acknowledge is totally problematic in places, although that's not on-topic for this thread), who actually worked as a professional housekeeper as part of her research for her book Nickel and Dimed, and who specifically noted how painful and physically damaging housework can be:
So ours is a world of pain—managed by Excedrin and Advil, compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases and then only on weekends, with booze. Do the owners have any idea of the misery that goes into rendering their homes motel-perfect? Would they be bothered if they did know, or would they take a sadistic pride in what they have purchased—boasting to dinner guests, for example, that their floors are cleaned only with the purest of fresh human tears? In one of my few exchanges with an owner, a pert muscular woman whose desk reveals that she works part-time as a personal trainer, I am vacuuming and she notices the sweat. “That’s a real workout, isn’t it?” she observes, not unkindly, and actually offers me a glass of water, the only such offer I ever encounter. Flouting the rule against the ingestion of anything while inside a house, I take it, leaving an inch undrunk to avoid the awkwardness of a possible refill offer. “I tell all my clients,” the trainer informs me, “‘If you want to be fit, just fire your cleaning lady and do it yourself.’” “Ho ho,” is all I say, since we’re not just chatting in the gym together and I can’t explain that this form of exercise is totally asymmetrical, brutally repetitive, and as likely to destroy the musculoskeletal structure as to strengthen it.And I want to take a moment to note how truly contemptible I find the suggestion that activities which can destroy womens' bodies and which have been traditionally used by a misogynist society as a tool to oppress women and prevent them from gaining financial independence, social support networks, and meaningful work -- You can't hold a job, honey, because then how would the house get clean? -- should be held up to the reader as something that women have a responsibility to do in order to become more attractive and more healthy and above all more socially acceptable to the larger community.
That is some contemptible garbage.
(Hat tip to Shaker Danielle.)
House Passes VAWA
CNN: House Passes Violence Against Women Act After GOP Version Defeated.
By a vote of 166-257, the GOP version of the Violence Against Women Act failed to win a majority after almost 90 minutes of debate. The House then voted 286-138 to pass the Senate version, with 87 Republicans joining all 199 Democrats to provide majority support.Have you ever heard Rep. Gwen Moore speak? If you are able to hear/view video, I encourage you to just go look at any video of her on YouTube. Because she pretty much rules.
...The Republican proposal deleted provisions from the Senate measure giving tribal authorities jurisdiction to prosecute cases on Indian reservations, specifically against discrimination of LGBT victims, and allowing undocumented immigrant survivors of domestic violence to seek legal status.
...House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and others repeatedly questioned why Republicans would seek to weaken a measure that received strong bipartisan support in the Senate.
A majority of Senate Republicans backed the act, along with every woman senator regardless of party, Pelosi noted.
"It's really hard to explain why, what eyes the Republicans are looking through, that they do not see the folly of their ways in the legislation they are proposing," Pelosi said.
Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, herself a rape victim, paraphrased the question of rights activist Sojourner Truth, a 19th century escaped slave and civil rights advocate.
"Ain't they women?" Moore shouted in reference to native American, undocumented immigrant and LGBT women.
Anyway. Yay.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Racism; racist imagery.]
"Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret. Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we'd do it differently."—Josh Tyrangiel, editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, issuing a classic non-apology for its horrendously gross racist cover that depicted caricatures of people of color swimming in cash alongside the cover story: "The Great American Housing Rebound: Flips. No-look bids. 300 percent returns. What could possibly go wrong?"
Matt Yglesias observes of the cover: "The idea is that we can know things are really getting out of hand since even nonwhite people can get loans these days! They ought to be ashamed." And of the apology: "Note that Tyrangiel doesn't say they regret publishing the actual content of the cover, but the "strong reactions" that it incited. How hard is it to take responsibility for the cover, say sorry, and leave it at that?"
Well. I guess that would require a belief that the cover was wrong, which Tyrangiel and Bloomberg Businessweek evidently don't have.
Another Observation
Earlier today, I wrote a thing about how feminism has built a space for me to have sustaining friendships with other women.
I also want to observe that feminism has built a space for me to have better friendships with men, too.
My closest male friends view me as their equal, and they don't treat me as an Exceptional Woman—not like those other women—and they don't oblige me to tolerate misogyny as the cost of our friendship. (And whooooooops if they fuck up, as we all do, I can talk to them about that and they listen and we can move on.) That's because they are feminists, too.
And because I am a feminist, I am empowered with the right to believe I am entitled to friendships with men in which I am not diminished or exceptionalized.
Including my most important friendship of all, with my husband, whom I love and I like.
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley, cuddling with his raccoon.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
My Body, To Love and Hate
[CN: Disability, Body Talk]
One of the fun things about having a disability is how my words are constantly policed in relation to it.
In public spaces, I'm not supposed to talk about my disability because it makes people uncomfortable to hear about all the ways in which I am disadvantaged and they are privileged. Talking about my disability can sound too much like complaining, or like I'm blaming them for not having to deal with the daily struggles that I cope with. And sharing what it's like to live with a disability can be overwhelming and upsetting, so I'm frequently expected to keep all that stuff to myself. I'm supposed to be silent on the subject.
At the same time, I'm supposed to be willing and ready to divulge every aspect of my personal life as it pertains to my disability on demand in order to justify why I can and can't do various things throughout the day. Why don't I want to go out to lunch? (Because I'll have to take the stairs and walk across the parking lot to the car.) Why do I only work every other day? (Because I have to lie down and rest for several hours every other day if I don't want my back to seize up.) Why won't I attend this evening function? (Because my medication makes night driving extremely difficult.) Why won't I wear this lovely necklace? (Because anything hanging from my neck causes me severe pain.) And so on. I'm supposed to be an open book, ready to drop my defenses and emotionlessly share anything and everything in order to clarify curiosity as needed.
But not too emotionlessly, mind you. I'm supposed to be cheerful about my disability so that I don't discomfit anyone else in the room. It's alright for them to grimace and make sad faces and shake their heads and sorrowfully opine I don't know how you do it and You are so brave just to get up in the morning, but it's my job to smile and grin and nod and reassure them that, no really, I'm happy! I'm not sad! I don't get pissed off at the world for the shitty luck of the draw that left me with a high-maintenance body that is constantly in pain! And I definitely don't feel unrelenting rage at the innumerable horde of doctors and nurses who have systematically dehumanized me and failed to treat me with basic human decency because of various deeply-held prejudices against women, fat people, and folks with chronic pain conditions!
No, sir. I'm a cheerful disabled person. No rancor here. That is what is expected of me, and I know my place in public well enough to deliver because I know the social consequences that will follow if I don't. I have had a lifetime of living with a disability to learn how I'm expected to behave in public spaces.
Most especially, I've found that I'm not supposed to express any form of unhappiness against my body. Even to the people who know me well, and who are comfortable with the occassional rage-fest against fate, god, and/or the medical establishment which constantly thumbs its nose at me, the idea that I might not be happy with my disabled body can cause them profound discomfort. And that is deeply frustrating to me, because it seems very natural to me that a person with a disability that causes them constant pain might -- just might -- have a complicated relationship with their body.
I love my body. I love the way I look in the mirror. I love the feel of my skin, and the texture of my hair. I love knowing the location of every little childhood scar, and reminiscing about the childish mishaps that earned those marks. I love that I can swim like a fish, and that I can walk all over the State Fair every summer. I love the freckles on my shoulders and the soft blonde hair on my arms. I love how my hands look so delicately similar to my mother's, and the way my hair and eyes look like copies of my father's. I love my body so much, even when the whole world seems to hate it for being fat and female, yet still I love it.
I hate my body. I hate the way my surgical scars remind me of painful moments I would rather forget. I hate the sensation of the rods grafted to my spine, and the way they constantly ache even though I'm not supposed to feel them, and I hate how they set off metal detectors. I hate the way the skin around my incisions is frequently numb and can't feel any sensation, and how my circulation has been damaged from multiple surgeries.
I hate the way I'm in pain constantly. I hate that there's only one position I can comfortably sleep in. I hate that my body responds to my medications in numerous upsetting ways: dizziness, fatigue, and short-tempered bursts of frustration at the people I love. I hate that I can walk across the State Fair in a day but that walking across a long parking lot can leave me motionless for a week. I hate the randomness and the never-knowing that always accompanies a flare-up. I hate the conflicting advice from my doctors: Take it easy or you'll hurt yourself, but don't rest too much or your muscles will atrophy. Don't lift anything over fifteen pounds, but you need to keep exercising or you'll only get weaker. And I hate that all this conflicting advice means that no matter what I do, I'm doing it wrong.
I hate that necklaces hurt me, and that bras cause me piercing pain. I hate that it hurts when my dad hugs me, because he forgets not to rest his weight on me. I hate that it hurts when my mom pats my lower back, because she forgets that my scar is tender. I hate that there are times when I am making love to my husband and suddenly all I can feel is pain, and all I can think about is how much I don't want him to realize it, because it's random and he's not responsible and I don't want him to feel guilty for something that isn't his fault and most of all I don't want my disability to take away yet another thing in a lifetime of taking away things from me.
I hate how expensive I am, and the mountains of medical bills and accommodation costs. I hate that I cry every day that I come home from work because my neck hurts from staring at the computer screen and my back hurts from sitting in my chair. I hate that I can't dance with my friends, that I can't ride roller coasters with my family, and that I can't go on mountain hikes with my husband. I hate that I have to stay home while my husband and family go on vacations and family reunions. I hate that there's a whole world of no-no-no out there, of experiences that I'm preventing from having on account of this body that is painful and expensive and frequently feels more like something in which I am trapped rather than a vehicle through which I can experience the wondrous world.
So, yes, I have a very complicated relationship with my body. And sometimes I feel like expressing that without being chiding and condemned and contradicted.
I've found that when I say things like I have a craptastic body or I want to trade this body in for a new one, that the people I'm speaking to tend to rush to reassure and contradict and police and silence. They'll tell me that it's really a lovely body, or that scars don't matter, as though my issues with my body are a matter of vanity. Or they'll reassure me that my disability is not that bad, that it could be so much worse, as if I'm complaining a little too early in the whole disability process. At least you can still walk, the message seems to be. Come back when you're in a wheelchair. They'll offer as comfort that the things I'm missing out on aren't all that, and I really shouldn't get down in the dumps about little things like roller coasters and mountains.
And I understand the impulse to comfort and console, I really do, but the message that comes across with these gentle reassurances and careful rebukes is that I'm really not supposed to express any dislike whatsoever of my back and my body. That it's wrong to do so, and that the only real reasons I could have to do so are bad ones: Vanity. Selfishness. Envy. Lack of perspective. Lack of gratitude for the good things I do have in my life. And so on.
The message I receive, over and over again, is that I'm just not allowed to dislike my body. Ever.
Worst are the people who suggest that my expressing any kind of displeasure with my body somehow adversely hurts people with bodies similar to or worse than mine. Just think how your words would make those people feel, they say, as though I'm not allowed to suggest that having a chronic pain disability might be anything less than peaches and rainbows. Maybe the idea is that all people with disabilities are constantly in a fragile state of convincing ourselves that life with a disability really is peaches and rainbows and if any one of us voices an opinion to the contrary, then the whole system will break down.
But whatever the reason, the message is the same: that because I am disabled, I must silence myself.
I'm sure there are people with disabilities out there who love their body completely and without reservation and never have a single negative thought about their body. (People are so varied and complex that it would be amazing to me to learn otherwise.) But I am not one of those people. Sometimes I dislike my body -- sometimes I dislike my body very strongly -- and I reserve the right to say so as part of disability advocacy. I reject the framing that people living with disabilities must be cheerful at all times, and that they have to stifle and silence any complex feelings they might have towards their bodies in service to an abstract Greater Good that demands stiff upper lips from everyone.
Part of disability advocacy is understanding and embracing that people living with disabilities are people, which means that they are complex and complicated and they have feelings about their selves and their bodies which they are allowed to own and express and explore. Expecting people with disabilities to be silent and to conform to a one-dimensional expectation of constant cheerful resignation is unfair and oppressive.
Part of body-acceptance advocacy is understanding and parsing the difference between body-negativity that reflects on whole populations without consideration for their consent versus body-negativity that is limited entirely to individual exploration about something that is a source of personal pain. "My fat body is gross" is a kyriarchial aesthetic value judgment that is applied across entire populations regardless of intent and is rightfully off-limits in a safe space; "my garbage back is acting up" is an expression of an individual struggle with physical limitations and the complex and validly negative feelings which can sometimes coexist with a chronic disability and is a statement that does not apply to anyone but the speaker. That contextual difference is important and cannot be ignored.
My feelings about my disabled body are mine to have and own and express, and whether or not those feelings I have about my disabled body make other people uncomfortable at my failure to conform to social expectations for people with disabled bodies is not my concern. To police my feelings and to suggest that I'm not allowed to have and express any feeling other than pure pleasure at the body that causes me chronic pain and deeply limits my movement through this world is deeply silencing and marginalizing to me.
Part of being disabled in a public space is navigating the daily demands that I say nothing about my disability unless and until I'm asked about it, in which case I'm supposed to divulge every aspect of it, in a cheerful manner that makes it totally clear that I hold no ill will towards my body and that I love dispensing this information on demand and that I totally don't feel pressured having to share right now, no really.
But when I am in a safe space, the least I can be allowed to do is express the feeling that my relationship with my body is complicated and that I sometimes hate my body for hurting me, and that it's okay for me to feel that way.
Fatties Are Destroying America
[Content Note: Fat bias.]
I have written previously about "Let's Move," First Lady Michelle Obama's fat-hating and disablist and otherwise problematic "anti-childhood obesity" campaign, which is ostensibly about "being healthy," but has absolutely no interest in a Health at Every Size paradigm. It is explicitly anti-fat. (See also: Paul Campos.) Lest anyone mistake I'm imagining fat hatred where none exists, I submit this paragraph from an op-ed penned by Michelle Obama for the Wall Street Journal:
[Promoting healthy products doesn't] just matter for businesses that produce and sell food. They matter for every business in America. We spend $190 billion a year treating obesity-related health conditions like diabetes and heart disease, and a significant portion of those costs are borne by America's businesses. That's on top of other health-related costs like higher absenteeism and lower worker productivity, costs that will continue to rise and threaten the vitality of American businesses until this problem is solved once and for all.Fat people are a "problem to be solved once and for all." I am a problem to be solved.
Of course I'm meant to understand that obesity is the problem that needs solving. But my fat does not exist separate from my humanity. I am a fat person. Targeting fatness targets the bodies of fat people, as if those bodies are somehow separate from the consciousnesses that inhabit them.
As I have noted before, this insistence on casually insisting that fat bodies are problems to be solved, while eliding the vast and varied reasons why some people will always be fat, makes anti-fat crusades inherently eliminationist:
When there are people for whom...obesity is not preventable, for myriad reasons, to bray about how their bodies (our bodies; ourselves) are "preventable" is to engage in eliminationist rhetoric.Further, demonizing fat people as a unique threat to US business is not only flatly inaccurate, but totally fucking unconscionable. Note the careful wording that "obesity-related health conditions like diabetes and heart disease" are responsible for "higher absenteeism and lower worker productivity," which is some real bullshit sleight-of-hand which implicitly argues that fat people are the only people with diabetes and heart disease, and people with diabetes and heart disease have "higher absenteeism and lower worker productivity," which essentially is a dressed-up version of the tired stereotype that fat people are sick and lazy.
I will never be not fat.
To get rid of my fat body, you have got to get rid of me.
...Fat people are not only tasked with finding individual solutions to systemic problems; they are, in many cases, asked to somehow overcome their very physiologies and make their bodies do things that they are simply unable to do.
We are literally asked to be people we are not and cannot be.
That is eliminationist. Plain and simple.
Whoops.
Fat people are sick and lazy and threaten the vitality of American business until we eliminate them.
That's what that paragraph actually says. That is an official statement of the First Lady of the United States. Which should terrify fat people, and anyone else who's got a body that the government might deem inconvenient or undesirable at any point.
In The News
[Content note: Gun violence, homophobia]
Thursby:
Nearly 300 companies have submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of DOMA. Get to boycotting, bigots!
A new poll of California voters shows 61% support marriage equality.
This is a real thing in the world: A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook.
The Stone Temple Pilots have fired lead singer Scott Weiland. Whoops!
Americans worry more about being a victim of gun violence than they do about losing a job or being unable to pay their mortgage. Way to go, gun lobby!
Pianist Van Cliburn has died after a battle against bone cancer.
Bradley Manning pleaded guilty today to leaking secret government documents. Zie will serve 20 years in prison.
Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un are now BFFs. Neat!
An Observation
I am sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of the female contributors and mods in this space. (The men, too, but this post isn't about them, and they will be Okay With That, because they are awesome.) And I don't just mean their enviable talents and humor and insight and decency publicly demonstrated, but also their kindness and support and solidarity, for me and each other, behind the scenes. When I think about how wonderful these women are, and how much I love them, my heart feels like it will fucking burst.
And I am grateful to the feminists and womanists who created a space in this culture, which sometimes just hates the fuck out of women, in which I can find connection with extraordinary women and love them and be loved back.
Because Who Is James Franco?
And verily, a light shone upon Liss-land, because performance artist Marina Abramovic announced the subject of her first film.
And it was James Franco:
"...he takes failure and risk all with the same intensity. He could just be another Hollywood actor and that's it - like everyone else. But he's crossing all kinds of borders and not always with great success. For him, process is more important than the result....And this is why I'm interested to explain to 'Who is James Franco?' and 'Why is he doing what he's doing?'" she continued. "He hardly sleeps or has a life. He just keeps going."
And yea, it was good, even unto not sleeping or having a life.
Or else, it was not good, crossing borders with nought of success.
Because James Franco. And thus, it was obvious.
Actual Headline
Actual Headline: Republicans Need to Go Negative. LOL! Yes, if there's one thing I say about the Republican Party, it's that they need to stop being so goldarn positive all the time!
Actual Paragraphs from This Garbage Story:
If Republicans want a chance at resurgence, they must take a page or two out of President Obama's worn playbook and veer sharply negative.What color is the sky in your world? I bet it's red.
But only a page or two. Republicans should not lower themselves to the level of a president who routinely lobs ad hominem political epithets their way, castigating them as intolerant, heartless and petty ogres who live only to serve their masters in the top income tax bracket.
Good Morning or Whatever!
I am pleased to announce that Shaker moderator Ana Mardoll, who you may also know as the fabulous author of Ana Mardoll's Ramblings, has joined Shakesville as a contributor. Yay! So please say hi and make her feel welcome to the main page!
Thank you for joining us, Ana!
