"Hi! It's a day!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Daily Dose of Cute
"Hi! It's a day!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Walking Thread
"Neat cat! That will really spice up Grimes Jail!"
(Spoilers are lurching around undeadly herein. CN: Violence; racism.)
Previously on The Walking Dead: Clues to what will happen in this episode of The Walking Dead! Can you guess what things will happen in this episode, based on the scenes just shown to you? Unless your brain has been devoured by zombies, I BET YOU CAN!
Grimes Gang is gearing up for war with Unpleasantville, so they need more weapons. Grimes decides to drive all the fuck way back to his old police station to raid its arsenal. Even though it seems like Grimesville is fully one thousand miles away and one hundred years past, it's actually only a short drive. Neat!
So: ROAD TRIP!
Michonne is behind the wheel of the Chevy Volt or whatever, which once served as Andrea's and Shane's fuckmobile, because the only time Grimes cedes control of anything to anyone ever is when he wants to catch some shut-eye. "I mean, there isn't even any Lady Antebellum on the radio!"—Rick Grimes, probably. So the black lady gets to be his fucking chauffeur. Ugh this show.
On the road, they fly by some random white dude screaming for their help, because he's all alone in the middle of a zombiepocalypse and that shit is scary. Michonne, Rick, and Carl the Hat give the backpacker the side-eye as they zoom by so quickly that the backpacker doesn't even time to appreciate their "Eat My Dust" and "I'd Rather Be Patriarchin'!" bumper stickers.
The trio comes across an old car wreck, and naturally their car gets stuck in the mud. As they kill the zombies who converge on them and then search for some junk to stick under the tires to free the fuckmobile, we are reminded of the terrific traffic jam of Season One in which cars full of dead but non-zombified people totally undermined the later reveal that everyone who dies automatically becomes a zombie. Whoooooops!
Michonne gets an earful as Grimes and Carl the Hat shit-talk her while busily rooting around the fuckmobile's back end. Windows! Michonne isn't one of them blah blah yawn fart. This is called FORESHADOWING, and we know that by the end of the episode, we will be treated to a colossally clunky scene of Grimes and Carl the Hat welcoming Michonne into the bosom of their group. "Here, we got you a gift basket full of pandering and racism!"
They finally get the car unstuck, just as the backpacker comes running over the crest of a hill in the distance, again begging for their mercy, which they do not offer. "Seeya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" They drive off and arrive moments, or possibly hours, later at Grimes' old deserted police station, only to find the armory has been ransacked. Only a single bullet remains LOL.
In good news, Hershel's Yell Therapy still seems to be working, as Grimes is unusually lucid.
They walk into town, which has some really great spray-painted signs reading AWAY WITH YOU and NO GUILT YOU KNOW THAT and JUST LISTEN. Normal stuff. In the middle of town, they come across Stick City, which is a section of street cordoned off with a bunch of barbed wire and pokey sticks on which zombies impale themselves. No one quips, "The walkers really get the point around here," because Merle is back at Grimes Jail.
Suddenly a masked rifleman on a rooftop is shooting at them and shouting at them to put down their weapons and GTFO. There's another no-hit shoot-out, until Carl the Hat gets a hit at close range, just knocking out the shooter because he's wearing wooden body armor OBVIOUSLY, and lo and behold the shooter and architect of Stick City is Morgan, the black man who saved Grimes' life at the very beginning of the series and for whom Grimes promised to return but never did.
Grimes decides they need to carry Morgan back into his building and leave him in safety, so he and Michonne thread their way through Morgan's series of booby-traps, including a spear pit hidden under a welcome mat LOL. They easily drag his not-corpse over a tripwire and dump him in his studio apartment, which is full of billions of weapons and has a cool blog on the wall.
They're just about to steal some shit and depart when Grimes finds Morgan's half of their walkie-talkie pair and gets all Grimesy about it. Michonne tries to convince him they need to leave, because Morgan is dangerous, but Grimes insists that they stay until Morgan wakes up. Proving that Michonne is right and Grimes is stupid, Morgan wakes up and immediately stabs Grimes, right after Carl the Hat takes off on some important hat business and Michonne leaves to babysit him.
Morgan and Grimes shout at each other because MEN! and Morgan begs Grimes to shoot him, but Grimes won't because shooting someone with their consent makes Grimes really uncomfortable. YELLING! GUILT! MEN FAILING IN THE PATRIARCHY DRIVES THEM TO INSANITY! Grimes wants Morgan to come with them, and Morgan makes a pretty strong case for staying put when he tells Grimes, "You will be torn apart by teeth or bullets!" Grimes responds by accusing Morgan of too much optimism LOL THIS SHOW LOL.
Meanwhile, Carl the Hat is being a total brat to Michonne, but Michonne saves his stupid life anyway. They use the old nutria subterfuge to distract zombies while Carl the Hat retrieves a picture of his happy family that's hanging up in a café. RIP Lori. They almost get away, but Carl the Hat drops the picture just inside the door. That fucking kid. "We have to go back!" he yells, because of course the writers of this show would steal an iconic line from Lost. Michonne goes back for the picture and comes back with it, along with what looks like a papier-mâché cat fashioned from Rip Taylor's confetti scraps. They are friends now.
After giving Grimes lots of sensible reasons for not wanting to join his group of knuckleheaded survivors, all of which Grimes rejects, Morgan tells him, "I have to clear," and somehow that is the magic combination of nonsense words that make sense to Grimes, and he stops badgering Morgan. He hooks back up with Michonne and Carl the Hat, and they leave Stick City, toting guns and a crib.
Carl the Hat apologizes to Morgan for having shot him, and Morgan tells him, "Son, don't ever be sorry." Which is a perfect lesson, obviously. If only every little tenderfooted young white patriarch in America had a sage black gentleman to tell him he should never be sorry about anything.
As they're packing up the fuckmobile, Carl the Hat tells Grimes that he thinks Michonne "might be one of us." Fuck you, kid. You'd be lucky if YOU were one of HER. (That doesn't make any fucking sense, but you know what I mean!)
Predictably, Grimes and Michonne have a great bonding moment over talking to dead people. Jokey-jokes! Clear the air! BFFs! Nothing says détente like a meet cute after months of seething hostility!
On the way back to Grimes Jail, the merry trio pass the mangled body of the backpacker. They stop to grab his backpack off the verge, then carry on their way. Important symbolism and shit, ya dig?
Discuss.
Seen
[Content Note: Violent fat hatred.]
Just another bit of detritus strewn throughout my every day reminding me that lots of thin people think the thought of my being violently slaughtered is a totes hilarious punchline.
Also? I know plenty of fat runners who scoff in this decal's general direction.
Today in Rape Culture
[Content Note: Discussion of rape culture]
I recently came across this posting on the Virginia Tech police department's website which details a class offered to Virginia Tech students called "Rape Aggression Defense". From the description:
The Rape Aggression Defense System is a program of realistic, self-defense tactics and techniques. The RAD System is a comprehensive course for women that begins with awareness, prevention, risk reduction and avoidance, while progressing on to the basics of hands-on defense training. RAD is not a Martial Arts program. Our course is taught by certified RAD Instructors and provides you with a workbook/reference manual. This manual outlines the entire Physical Defense Program for reference and continuous personal growth. The RAD System of Physical Defense is currently being taught at many Colleges and Universities. The growing, wide spread acceptance of this system is primarily due to the ease, simplicity and effectiveness of our tactics, solid research, legal defensibility and unique teaching methodology. The Rape Aggression Defense System is dedicated to teaching women defensive concepts and techniques against various type of assault, by utilizing easy, effective and proven self-defense/martial arts tactics. Our system of realistic defense will provide a woman with the knowledge to make an educated decision about resistance.This class is for women only. I looked around the police site and there is nothing specifically targeted to men regarding rape and assault prevention.
And THEN I came across this (which is from late last month):
(CNN) -- The University of Colorado-Colorado Springs was roundly criticized and ridiculed last week by victims' rights groups, gun advocates and others skeptical of tips on the school's website for deterring rapists, which included urinating and vomiting as potential ways of repulsing assailants.As noted in both the CNN article and the R.A.D. description on the Virginia Tech website: "The RAD System of Physical Defense is currently being taught at many Colleges and Universities".
[...]
In the wake of last week's controversy, UCCS removed the tips, which were intended as "last resort options when all other defense methods have been exhausted," the school said in a statement explaining its decision.
The tips were taken out of their original context as supplemental material for a self-defense course for students known as Rape Aggression Defense Systems, or R.A.D., Jim Spice, the college's executive director of public safety and chief of police, said in an e-mail.
Anyone wonder what "rape culture" looks like? It looks like that: "prevention" being the responsibility of the victim and that being the normal, accepted way we as a society talk about prevention of rape and assault.
There is a bit of good news in that Congress finally reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act and, as The Center for Public Integrity notes:
In a vote of 286 to 138, House members approved a reauthorization of VAWA that incorporates, as Section 304, the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, known as Campus SaVE.[...]Unfortunately: the sequester. The sequester will gut VAWA funding, including programs like those to improve campus education and safety.
[...]
The legislation, first filed in the fall of 2010, will expand required campus education programs to include prevention awareness and bystander intervention strategies for students, meant to stop sexual assaults from occurring. The measure aims to improve victim protections by guaranteeing counseling, legal assistance, and medical care on campus, among other accommodations. It also will establish minimum, national standards for all schools to follow in responding to allegations of sexual assault and sexual violence. For instance, the act makes explicit that schools must afford both the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim the same rights — access to advisers, written notifications, as well as appeals processes — during campus disciplinary proceedings.
“They’re out there meeting people, giving their trust, instead of making people earn their trust,” said University of Georgia Police Chief Jimmy Williamson, whose school reported five rapes last year. [ed. that year would be 2011](source)
Most assaults on campus are by acquaintances, he said, and new students haven’t had time to assess their new friends.
“We make ourselves vulnerable to other people who have the wrong intention," Williamson said.
--
[Commenting Guidelines: This post is not about the merits of individual people choosing to take self-defense classes. Judging other people for doing so or not doing so is not on-topic and would be Missing The Point. So let's avoid that in the comments thread, mmmkay?]
[Related Reading: Five Reasons Why "Teach Women Self-Defense" Isn't a Comprehensive Solution to Rape, Rape Culture and Campus In-Security]
In The News
[Content note: Rape, rape culture, terrorism, homophobia, violence]
Monday Morning News and Inspiration:
Bonnie Franklin, who played a single mother on One Day at a Time, has died.
Electronic Arts will host a conference to discuss gay issues in games and gaming companies.
Here's just a perfect explanation of why Washington, D.C. is fully dysfunctional.
So, American conservatives and Al Qaeda are in agreement then?
Sad news.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitted that to coercing subordinates into sexual situations.
Amazon halts sales of Keep Calm and Rape T-shirts. How did they even start?
The Holocaust was a lot worse than previously thought.
A 13-year-old Mexican drug cartel hitman was found dead. Good christ.
Actual goverement memo, circa 1959: Regulations Governing Mountain Climbing Expeditions in Nepal — Relating to Yeti.
Lech Walesa engages in solidarity with douchebags.
Jay Leno may be leaving The Tonight Show. Finally/again.
A baby born with HIV appears to have been cured.
Holy moly, has anyone seen this? Oof.
And last but least, from a recent email:
Ummm ... collective?
Another GOP Genius on Rape and Women's Bodies
[Content Note: Rape culture. NB: Not only women can be raped and/or be impregnated via rape.]
Lest we have a moment of peace from Republican physiology experts publicly opining on what happens to people with uteri when they are raped, Celeste Greig, president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, gave a supercool interview to the Daily Democrat in which she attempted to rebuke as "insensitive" the infamous commentary of disgraced misogynist bozo Todd Akin, but ended up essentially repeating exactly what he'd said:
Before arriving at the state GOP's spring convention here, Celeste Greig told this newspaper that pregnancies by rape are rare "because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized.""Granted, I am a no-nothing dipshit, but here are some unsubstantiated claims that I can't defend but I'm sure they're true, don't worry."
Grieg is the president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, the state's oldest and largest GOP volunteer organization. Ronald Reagan once called it "the conscience of the Republican Party."
Ironically, Greig was in the midst of criticizing former Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin for saying that victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." It was a remark that many believe led not only to his defeat in November but also helped tarnish the Republican brand around the country.
"That was an insensitive remark," Greig said. "I'm sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized."
Greig, however, went on to say: "Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don't know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act."
Santorum. Akin. Walsh. Mourdock. Koster. Gingrey. And now Greig. What a cool club full of cool people!
Trauma does not prevent conception. As Steven Harmon notes at the Daily Democrat: "Most research on rape and pregnancy has shown roughly the same rates of pregnancy than pregnancies resulting from consensual sex. But one 2003 study showed the rate at which women get pregnant after rape to be more than double than that of a single act of consensual sex, presumably because women who are raped are less likely to use contraception. The study used data from the United States National Violence Against Women survey."
There is a lot of privilege—and a lot of different kinds of privilege—that acts in service to the profoundly ignorant belief that trauma prevents conception. If, for example, any of these Republicans had even a passing familiarity with the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war in other parts of the world, and the plentiful pregnancies that result, they would not be making such absurd claims.
[H/T to Andrea at Think Progress.]
Monday Morning Cuppa
It's going to be one of THOSE days for me at work, maybe one of those weeks. Plus, apparently Mitt Romney is still talking.
Only my Wonder Woman mug is getting me through:
...along with plenty of tea, Early Grey, hot, of course.
Do you have a mug, t-shirt, magnet, or other sloganized item that helps you get through THOSE days?
Mitt Romney Is Still Terrible
[Content Note: Racism; classism.]
Good morning! Or whatever! Happy Monday to you wherever you are! Yesterday, historical footnote Mitt Romney took to the airwaves of Fox News to stomp on some sour grapes to make whine and remind us all that he is still so fucking terrible! Let's all celebrate that this terrible garbage nightmare was not elected to the US presidency by reading some great headlines about his hot interview!
Think Progress—Romney: I Lost Because Minorities Love Obamacare: "We did very well with the majority population, but not with minority populations, and that was a failing, that was a real mistake. ...I think the Obamacare attractiveness and feature was something we underestimated, particularly among lower incomes." HA HA PERFECT QUOTE! It's terrific how Romney manages to be correct—he did not offer policies that appeal to people who aren't rich and white—but also still be a total fucking asshole devoid of even the most infinitesimal modicum of self-reflection or accountability. Neat!
AP—Romney: Heart Told Him He'd Win, Until He Saw Florida Returns: "Mitt Romney says his heart said he was going to win the presidency, but when early results came in on election night, he knew it was not to be. The GOP nominee tells Fox News Sunday that he knew his campaign was in trouble when exit polls suggested a close race in Florida. Romney thought he'd win the state solidly. Obama ended up taking Florida and won the election by a wide margin in the electoral vote." Whooooooooops! His heart was sure he'd win, because his brain forgot that his mouth said that people aren't entitled to food!
Politico—Romney: 'It Kills Me' Not to Be President: First of all: Ha ha GOOD. Secondly, here is the full quote, which will make you want to rage-quit reading this post: "I'll look at what's happening right now, I wish I were there. It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done. The president is the leader of the nation. The president brings people together, does the deals, does the trades, knocks the heads together; the president leads. And—and I don't see that kind of, of leadership happening right now." THIS GUY! UGH!
Yes, yes you are.
Good day, sir. I said GOOD DAY!
Sunday Shuffle
How about you?
BONUS:
I found this earlier this week and it's Made of Awesome:
Open Thread
Hosted by a white rabbit.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by animals from Lewis Carroll stories.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Women's History: An Extremely Short Introduction
Since it is officially women's history month in the United States, this seems like a good time to think about the study of the past, centered around women's experiences: or, "women's history." Please note: I'm writing this from my own, personal and limited perspective as a historian who is concerned with women and gender. This is an attempt to briefly summarize the development of women's history in the West for non-specialists. In it I cite a very few examples, which are not meant as comprehensive, nor even fully representative of "important" works. I invite suggestions for further engagement in women's history, in comments.
As an academic discipline, women's history hasn't really been around very long, although of course women had a past long before historians started writing about it. But "history" isn't the same as "the past"; rather, it's the discipline in which we study and reconstruct the past. That past is reconstructed via clues called primary sources, the (usually) written documents from which we piece together narratives.
It's not that women haven't been written about, nor that women haven't left primary sources. For example, Enehduanna, a Sumerian aristocrat and priestess, left behind one of the earliest pieces of poetry left by any human, man or woman. Where women showed up in written histories in the pre-modern world, as in the works of Herodotus or Bede, or even in the Bible, they are largely supporting characters in the political and religious narratives that centered upon men.
If women starred in historical narratives in the West, it was as Exceptional Women: queens, saints or other "female worthies." An early modern English example, Thomas Heywood's The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine of the Most Worthy Women of the World, detailed the lives of three Jewish women, three "heathen" women, and three Christian women. Heywood drew on fantasy and legend as much as history, but still undoubtedly centered women in his book. Still, this wasn't "women's history." These were Exceptions who proved the rules of patriarchy.
These biographies of "women worthies" became an acceptable way for women to write history, even if they were shut out of the academy and formal, "professional" historical study. Victorian Englishwoman Agnes Strickland, for example, made a name for herself with the entirely respectable Lives of the Queens of England and other volumes co-written with her sister Elisabeth.
The first wave of women's activism stirred some small academic interest in women's past lives. I'll mention only two historians here. 1919 saw the publication of Working life of Women in the Seventeenth Century by Alice Clark, and was a groundbreaking work in the archivally-based study of women from a perspective of their labour. Clark's work is wide-ranging, critiquing the origins of capitalism through the perspective of female labor.
American Mary Ritter Beard was interested in far-reaching questions of women's oppression. In her 1946 work Woman as a Force in History, she critiqued and analyzed specific moments in history that resulted in the disempowerment of women, such as the embrace of those English legal tradition in the young United States that denied the personhood of married women.
It is not accidental that Clark, Beard, and others like them, were heavily influenced by suffrage and labour movements. Those forces challenged academic historians to rethink history from the perspective of ordinary people, and approach often called "history from below." Not surprisingly, Second Wave feminism and its related movements had an even more profound affect on edging women's history into the academy. By the 1970s, a critical mass of historians, suffused with the questions and consciousness of Second Wave feminism, began producing many works both concretely archival and challengingly theoretical.
The late Gerda Lerner was one of this groundbreaking generation. Her book Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, published in 1972, furthered the very important work of preserving the archival sources of women's lives and making them available to the public, while her ambitious work The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) was an impressive attempt to trace the ways that patriarchy had evolved as a social contruct.Lerner was also groundbreaking in demolishing the myth of female solidarity across time and place; essays in The Majority Finds Its Past definitely disproved the racist "sisterhood" myth so beloved of many white Second Wave feminists. Far from gender solidarity trumping race, white women had indeed oppressed black women, and race was at least as crucial a component of women's experiences in America as gender.
The problem of racial and ethnic intersectionality in women's historical experience became an increasingly pressing intellectual problem in the Uited States and elsewhere. Speaking personally, I remember being blown away when I first read Deborah Gray White's book about enslaved Black women's experiences, 1985's Ar'n't I a Woman? It beautifully grappled with deep complexities of gender, race, sexuality, family and class within women's experiences. It was a work with strong social justice roots; simultaneously, it was deeply intellectual and theoretically complex.
Such complexity in women's history helped launch new histories. Joan Wallace Scott's 1986 essay Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis brought new attention to the social construction of gender in history. From these roots in women's history, and gender history, new historiographies arose: the history of sexuality, family history, queer history and more. In doing so, all of these fields often answered a very personal question: What did people like me do in the past? I like the introduction from 1987's Quebec Women: A History:
Like thousands of children, Anne liked to journey back in time. In history classes, nobody could tell her what Emilie, her great-great grandmother, had done. They would tell her only about the great men who had changed the course of history. Had she been bold enough to ask about the women who had played a role in this history, they would probably have read through the short list of fmaous women, from Marguerite Bourgeoys to Thérèse Casgrain... For historians, Emilie had no historical importance: she had simply lived her life and was therefore non-significant. What brought us to write this synthesis of the history of the women who had lived during the past four centuries was our refusal to accept that the hundreds of thousands of Emilies were non-significant... Women had also made history. We had to find them, to find out where and why they were overshadowed. We had to put the facts in their true perspective.
One of those early women's historians who made me re-think the "true perspective" of history was Joan Kelly. Her groundbreaking essay Did Women Have a Renaissance was published in 1977, nearly 20 years before I encountered it. I can still remember the "click" moment when I read it for my undergraduate historiography class.
Kelly noted that most of the characteristics we associate with the "rebirth" of European intellectualism did not affect women, even elite women, the way they affected men. Her essay challenged me to re-think my entire structure of history. It had literally never occurred to me that the very periodization of history might have a bias, that embedded in categories like "Renaissance" might be the assumption that only certain pepole's experiences mattered in history.
Make no mistake--women's history (and all the historigraphies related to it) is/are still very much in progress. Early historians of women in the West tended to focus on elite, white, straight women--and those women still get more attention than do others. It's partly a matter of the records, but more importantly a matter of the will and the interest and the support for pushing the history of women beyond its white, straight, Christian, elite roots. Historians of women are becoming more diverse; we need to become much more diverse, both in our persons and our mindsets.
But that's not a problem unique to women's history. Indeed, I'd say it's a sign of the maturation of women's history that it continues to evolve--because so does all serious academic history. Women's history intersects with cultural history, with military history, with the history of every geographic division of the world, with histories of religion and law and race and labor--and it will continue to intersect with new histories that are only beginning to be explored. The past may remain static, but history is always changing.
Have you been engaged by any memorable works of women's history--academic or popular? (Speaking personally, since my own background is in British, American, and Canadian history, I'd be especially interested in women's history from non-Western historiographies.) Do you have plans to explore women's history this month, or any month? Feel free to leave recommendations or stories in the comments below for films, books, exhibits, archival resources, or anything else you'd like to recommend.
On Quvenzhané Wallis
by Jessica Luther, aka scatx, who can also be found at her own blog, Speaker's Corner in the ATX, and blazing trails of righteous fury on Twitter.
[Content Note: Racism; misogyny.]
On Sunday night, the Oscars happened. And a whole lot of people have written good things about how the ceremony itself was misogynistic and also people have pointed out that we really shouldn't have expected more from a group of people who we already know to be misogynists.
But the misogyny was not limited to the TV screen. It leaped right onto the Twitter feed of over 4 million people on Sunday night when the Onion tweeted the following:
Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013I have so many thoughts about this tweet and the fallout from it and I'm going to try to get them written here in a coherent fashion. This is me saying: This will be long but I'll try to make it worth it.
First, let me address why I found this tweet to be way over the line (and I'm cribbing from some tweets I wrote on Monday morning).
It matters that this was not the only "joke" directed at Wallis that night. During the telecast itself, which 40 million people watched, MacFarlane said this:
So let me just address those of you up for an award, so you got nominated for an oscar, something a 9-year-old could do! She's adorable, Quvenzhane. She said to me backstage. "I really hope I don't lose to that old lady, Jennifer Lawrence." To give you an idea how young she is it'll be 16 years before she's too old for Clooney.And I think that we need to take these two "jokes" together and discuss their full impact. [If you need a primer on why "cunt" is a problematic word and a terrible slur, Melissa has one.]
Quvenzhané Wallis is 9.
Joking about a 9-year-old black girl hooking up with George Clooney is INAPPROPRIATE. She was in the fucking audience. 40 million people were watching. It was the biggest night of her life. Her nomination was historic because of her age. But it was also a nomination for a black actress, something that is still rare in Hollywood. And MacFarlane used her to make a joke about how George Clooney likes to date young women.
But the context of these "jokes" is so much larger than the Oscars, MacFarlane, Hollywood, the Onion, or Twitter.
Wallis is a young black girl in a country with a horrific history of racism and sexual exploitation of young black girls.
She's a young black girl in a country with a horrific history of racism and sexual exploitation of young black girls. Because - AND I CAN'T SAY THIS ENOUGH - black women's bodies have been sexually exploited, used, disparaged FOR CENTURIES. That's great for you if that history doesn't mean anything to you but that doesn't mean that history isn't real and isn't present now. The fact that you don't have to engage with that history when MacFarlane or the Onion "jokes" just means you're lucky. (Also, what Shelby Knox tweeted.)
SHE IS 9. She took a PUPPY PURSE WEARING A TUTU to the Oscars. And got sexualized and called a "cunt" just for daring to be in public eye.
@mslooola expressed it this way (tweet #1, tweet #2):
there comes a point where you're simply FATIGUED. fatigued that comedy has STILL not found a way to evolve from making you the punchline. i need Seth MacFarlane, The Onion, (and their defenders) and all those who make a living through comedy to DO BETTER.The Onion apologized on Monday.
This is also part of a larger story about Wallis herself and the overall disrespect she has received. The media refuses to learn how to say her name. Despite the critical acclaim to the movie in which she starred. Despite her historic nomination. Despite that she is a human being. From Arturo Garcia:
First, there was an Associated Press — Associated Press! — reporter on the red carpet before the show allegedly telling Wallis, "I'm gonna call you "Annie," instead of by her given name, for which the reporter was quickly and rightfully corrected. In another bizarre outburst, model Chrissy Teigen saw fit to call her "a brat."This was not just about the Onion.
Sequestration Impacts, by State
This breakdown of sequestration impacts, state-by-state and by category, is super useful. It is also super depressing.
[H/T to my friend A.]
Elementary
[Spoiler Warning: Details of recent episodes of Elementary are revealed in this post.]
So, Ana Mardoll and I pretty much talk nonstop about our love for Elementary, CBS' new Sherlock Holmes series starring Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as Watson. I mean, we could talk about this show FOREVER, and we will, in this thread right here, all by ourselves, unless you join us. So join us!
I am still super-loving this show, and the recent episode in which Holmes finally invited Watson to be his partner was one of my favorite episodes of television ever. ALL THE BLUBS!
I also loved Vinnie Jones (VINNIE JONES!) as Moriarty's minion. WHO IS GOING TO PLAY MORIARTY?! I hope it's a lady! In fact, I hope it's Thandie Newton, who would be such a perfect kickass nemesis for Holmes and I can't get out of my head that she would be the perfect Moriarty! I mean, Irene is already dead in this series, so Holmes has no female rival who is his equal. Make it so, Elementary!
If Moriarty has to be a dude, I would find Damien Lewis an acceptable selection. For the record.
And are we ever going to see Sherlock's dad? Or Mycroft? WHO ARE GOING TO PLAY SHERLOCK'S DAD AND BROTHER?! Obviously, Malcolm McDowell and Colin Firth, right? Obviously.
Anyway. Two more things I love:
1. I love that as Holmes and Watson get more in sync with one another, they increasingly wear the same colors and/or similar patterns. That is a very subtle but very brilliant commentary on the progression of their partnership!
2. I love that Holmes never says, "Elementary, my dear Watson." That will be the last line of the season, right? Right.
Discuss.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by glass.
Recommended Reading:
FMF News: Arkansas Abortion Ban after Twenty Weeks Becomes Law
Charles: How Mom's Death Changed My Thinking About End-of-Life Care
Flyover Feminism: Black Pete, Zwarte Piet: The Documentary: An Interview with Shantrelle P. Lewis [Content Note: Discussion of racism/appropriation.]
Chloe: New Protests over Sexual Violence in India [Content Note: References to violent crimes against women and girls.]
TDW: Space Shot of the Day: A Protoplanet Forming
Stacy: Neil deGrasse Tyson Does the Moonwalk
Jorge: Get Ready for Downton Abbey's First Black Character
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