Zelda, just sitting next to me on the couch like she's people.
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
Zelda, just sitting next to me on the couch like she's people.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Homophobia.]
"If you redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, you must—you must permit adoption by same-sex couples, and there's–there's considerable disagreement among—among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a—in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not. Some States do not—do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason."—Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, giving a bullshit assist to the defense during oral arguments in the Prop 8 case before the Court yesterday.
There is, in fact, not "considerable disagreement among sociologists" about same-sex parenting. Further, a 2006 report issued by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that "virtually every valid study [on same-sex parenting] reaches the same conclusion: The children of gays and lesbians adjust positively and their families function well." And in 2010, a study spanning more than two decades found "that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers."
These same results have been found in multiple countries and across a spectrum of cultures.
And on the issue of harm to children: Same-sex parents are more likely to adopt older children, children of color, and/or children with special needs than different-sex parents or single straight adopters. Unlike the many studies regarding children adopted and raised by same-sex parents, there is not an abundance of research showing great outcomes for most children who spend most or all of their lives in foster care.
If one really cares about children's well-being, that should matter.
[Related Reading: I Write Letters.]
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, racism, gun culture, gun violence]
Thurston Howell Day:
A proposed bill in Kansas is calling for people with HIV or AIDS to be quarantined.
Meanwhile: The New York City AIDS Memorial's Board of Directors unveiled new renderings for the final design of the memorial.
For all those bothered by the use of the word vagina in science class: A song! [CN: Cissexism.]
An man accused of stealing 21 tons of Wisconsin cheese has been arrested.
A new musical stage show inspired by the atrocities carried out by Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik is to open in the U.K. this summer.
Winny Puhh is not going to the Eurovision finals this year.
TruFact™: Liss still has her Menudo lunchbox. She eats out of it every day.
[Image via Andy. Again.]
Totally True Stories
Once upon a time, Deeky wanted to be in a band. Specifically, he wanted to be in a Britpop band, because who doesn't?
The year was 1986, and young Deeky W. Gashlycrumb was tearing up LA as a performance artist known as Le Voleur de Derrières. He had blazers in every color of the rainbow, and he could roll-tuck his jean cuffs above his black patent loafers so tightly that they became waterproof conveyers of the smuggled vintage Reunite Lambrusco that kept him neck-deep in the finest cassette singles money could buy.
But what he really wanted was to be a pop star.
So he heard that there was this dude in London named Matt Goss was forming a band, and he flew to the UK for a tryout. It went pretty well. Deeky even wrote a great song that he gifted to Matt called "When Will I Be Famous?" I was super happy to hear from him that it was going so well!
It was a very brief marriage in the mid-80s. Let us not speak of it.
It went so well, Matt and Deeks even started shooting promotional materials for the debut album of their newly-formed pop group, Matt and His New Friend Deeky.
Anyway. For those of you who are massive and eternal Goss fans, like I am, you know how this story ends. At the last moment, Matt Goss decided he was not going to move forward with Matt and His New Friend Deeky, kicked Deeks out of the band, and formed a band called Bros. with his twin brother Luke.
They released "When Will I Be Famous?" as a single, which shot to the top of the charts.
Deeky never saw a dime, even though he totally wrote the song. Or at least a version of the song, before the Goss Brothers changed the lyrics, melody, and arrangement. They definitely kept the title, though. I think. Deeky's song might actually have been called "Time for Me to Be Famous," or "I Can't Believe I'm Not Famous." It's all a blur now.
Speaking of Blur, they are a much better band than Bros.
The end.
DOMA Arguments
This is a good summary of the DOMA arguments made before the Supreme Court yesterday, and how it all went down.
It is incredible that the Court and the country may go through all of this, and we may emerge out the other side still without any ruling that establishes "a specific constitutional standard for judging laws that allegedly discriminate based on sexual orientation." Allegedly. Ahem.
Aggrieved Christian Soldiers
[Content Note: Christian supremacy; homophobia.]
Over at The American Prospect, Paul Waldman documents the outpouring of self-pitying aggrievement from a number of conservative Christian commentators who are lamenting their "second-class citizenship" because they support the "traditional definition of marriage."
Here's CBN's David Brody lamenting the sorrows of Kirk Cameron and Tim Tebow. Here's Red State's Erik Erikson predicting the coming pogrom ("Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God's own established plan."). Here's Fox News commentator Todd Starnes on the oppression that has already begun ("it's as if we're second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage").Which is only the tip of the monumentally martyry iceberg: Here is Pro-Prop 8 Pastor Jim Garlow warning that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, Christians will be "forced underground. Their buildings will be taken away from them, many of their rights will be taken away from them." Sounds legit.
And here's Pat Robertson (of course) warning that "the foundation of our society since the founding of our great Republic is under attack" by "a few people [who] want to have their way doing of sex affirmed by everyone else." Solid commentary as always from the biggest bozo in the hate biz.
But it's Brody who really takes the garbage cake with his hilariously headlined column: "Are Evangelicals Now More Scorned than Homosexuals?"
Direct from the school of, "Counter-Intuitive Thinking," I bring you this question: When it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage, are Evangelical Christians actually the ones more ridiculed than homosexuals?Executive Translation: Direct from the school of "Self-Pitying Aggrievement at Losing the Undeserved Privilege We've Justified with a Cherry-Picked Religious Text," I bring you a load of codswallop that anyone with a modicum of decency would be embarrassed to think in their most private thoughts, no less write and publish for public consumption. Let's be honest: I am a jerk who uses contemptible anachronistic idioms to simultaneously engage in projection and appropriation. I am a colossal dirtbag who makes money by pretending that systemic discrimination is "ridicule," and that being ridiculed for innate characteristics is the same as being ridiculed for one's beliefs, and, further, that it is my beliefs being held in contempt rather than my insistence on trying to legislate them. I am being rightly marginalized for being a hateful vessel of kyriarchal norms, but I'mma pout about it. Boo-hoo.
In the media's narrative, you would think that homosexuals are the poor souls who have been banished by society like ugly stepchildren and are now rising to overcome incredible odds.
But what about today? Let's be honest: If you are a conservative evangelical who believes in the biblical definition of traditional marriage then guess what? You are one of the following: An outcast, a bigot, narrow-minded, a "hater" or all of the above. It's a different type of ridicule but it's still ridicule.
The tables have been turned. Evangelicals are now the ugly stepchild. In our American culture today, you can easily make the argument that it is harder to stand for biblical truth than it is to be a supporter of gay marriage in today's society.
Anyway.
Christians are not in danger of losing their sway in this country anytime soon. It is execrable that there are conservative Christians—whose paternalistic, retrofuck, unscientific, indefensible views on reproductive rights and women's agency are currently being legislated all over the nation with nary a peep from the office-holding pro-choice president—who have the temerity to whine about how oppressed they are simply for having their undiluted right to legislate how every other person should be allowed to use their bodies and live their lives minimally eroded via marriage equality.
Losing the capacity to oppress is not oppression.
And there's no equivalence, none, between a position that wants to reserve marriage for some and deny it to others, and a position that wants to extend marriage to all, for anyone who wants to take part in whatever way they wish, with no one compelled to participate.
Which is my polite way of saying: No one's forcing you to get gay-married, dipshits.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker sashasmiles: What place do you most want to visit (or revisit) someday?
Have a nice day!
At some point, these pictures from the set of the film Animal Rescue will run out, which will obviously be a terrible day. But today is not that day. Yay!
Today in Rape Culture
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
So, a female student at the University of Oregon created an anti-rape PSA in response to the Steubenville case, which was gone viral, and CNN did a short piece on the PSA.
[The video was screwing up the page code, so I removed it, but you can view the segment here.]
CNN Anchor Don Lemon (a black man wearing a dark pinstriped suit and a brown tie): Well, it's a video that has been going viral on the heels of the Steubenville rape case—a co-ed at the University of Oregon says she was frustrated by the case and decided to make her own video to show what someone should do in a similar situation. Samantha Stindall (ph) calls her public service video "a needed response." Here's a clip—the entire clip.Aside from the fact that I wasn't aware we were still using the term "co-ed" in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen, it was a solid bit of coverage. But this is how CNN is currently teasing the video on its front page:
Video Clip of a young white man in a t-shirt and jeans speaking into a camera, while a young white woman wearing a t-shirt and shorts is passed out on a couch in the background: Hey, bros. [he gestures to the woman] Check who passed out on the couch. Guess what I'm gonna do to her? [he retrieves a pillow and puts it under a head; a blanket which he drapes on top of her; a stool on which he sets what looks like a cup of tea; smooths her hair] Real men? Treat women with respect.
Lemon: The YouTube video just went live on Friday; it's already received more than 727,000 views.
The fuck, CNN? I shouldn't need to explain why it's fucked-up to tease an anti-rape video exhorting men not to assault unconscious women with an image and text suggesting that it's a video of a man assaulting an unconscious woman. "HA HA PSYCH!"—CNN. Just no. Anti-rape advocacy is not the time for wacky reversal pranks.
I'm sure there's some threadbare rationalization waiting to be deployed about drawing in the very people who need to see it most, but suffice it to say that effective anti-rape advocacy does not happen in spaces that tantalize rape aficionados with materials that appear to promise access to a sexual assault.
As a general rule, effective anti-rape advocacy also doesn't have the potential to make anti-rape advocates gasp and survivors trigger when they stumble upon it.
Of course, I don't believe for a moment that CNN gives a flying fuck about anti-rape advocacy. They pretty clearly just want click-throughs, from anyone, for any reason. Better luck next time, rapists.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by chickadees.
Recommended Reading:
The Naming Series continues at Are Women Human?: Let's Talk About Names: Mattie. [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of gender- and body policing.]
FMF News: Female Teacher Murdered in Pakistan [Content Note: The post at this link includes descriptions of gun violence and misogyny.]
Jamilah: It's Bigger Than Adria Richards [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism, misogyny, and harassment.]
Katie: The International Violence Against Women Act: Coming Soon to a Congress Near You
Angry Asian Man: Artist Julia Kim Smith Asks Google "Why" [Content Note: The post at this link contains screencaps of racist Google searches.]
Ragen: HAES/Size Acceptance FAQs [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of fat bias and body policing.]
Fall: The HAES® files: On Advocacy
Nicole: Is Social Media Causing Your Activist Burnout?
Veronica: Latino and Women Farmers and Ranchers Have Until May 1st to File a Claim
Lauren: Could Rob Lowe Be Any Happier as He Uses One of Those Water Jet Packs?
Josh: The Next Netflix Show Will Be a Science Fiction Thriller from The Wachowskis
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Get to Know a Contributor
Here are the Five Things You Definitely Didn't Know about Melissa McEwanz:
1. She collects recipes. Specifically egg salad recipes. She keeps them in a journal titled Egg Salad Dreams and Memories.
2. She is suuuper into pan flute music.
3. She has seen SpaceCamp (starring Kate Capshaw, Larry B. Scott, and Lea Thompson) a total of 39 times: Six times in theaters, 27 times on VHS, four times on laser disc and twice on Betamax.
4. She loves chalk drawings.
5. She has an entire set of Aaron Carter dolls on her desk:
TruFact™: Last time I was over I tried to play with her Aaron Carter dolls and she got sooooooooooo mad! "These are MIB, jerk! Don't muss them up!" she shouted. Dang!
Daily Dose of Cute
"Yeah, I'm fuzzy. So what? You wanna make something of it?"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Would That I Knew
Most of the searches currently bringing people to Shakesville via search engines have to do with marriage equality being argued before the Supreme Court. This, however, is my favorite among them:
Excellent question, my friend.
Teaspoons 101: I Am Not the Thought Police
Frequently, when I ban a commenter who isn't overtly expressing bigotry, but is derailing a thread with typical silencing techniques—accusations of oversensitivity, humorlessness, looking for things to get mad about, exhortations to "get over it," protestations of providing much-needed objectivity, and the usual tiresome attempts to deny the perceptions and experiences of the actual targets of the particular bigotry being discussed—I make a point to note that the commenter is not being banned from the blog in its entirety. I will note that their commenting privileges have been revoked, but invite them to keep reading the blog in the hopes they might learn where they went wrong, and assure them I will be open to a discussion of reinstating their commenting privileges if and when they email me with some awareness to that end.
I almost always immediately receive an irate email full of phrases like "echo chamber" and "censorship," and I am berated for being the "thought police."
I am not the thought police.
I am challenging readers—and always, too, myself—to think about things in a way in which we may have never thought about them before.
The entire rest of the world, with its privileging of men and heterosexuality and cisgender people and thin (but not too thin!) and tall (but not too tall!) and able and healthy white bodies and religious people and people who desire and have sex and people who can and want to be parents and the wealthy and the traditionally educated, and all the ways in which the rest of the world facilitates and upholds that privilege, and all the ways in which the rest of the world marginalizes and demeans and treats as less than all the people who deviate from those privileged "norms," and all the ways the rest of the world has indoctrinated you into that system of privilege, and socialized you to believe it's the natural and right and immutable state of the world, and all the shills for the kyriarchy who fill the ether with self-reinforcing rubbish on a constant loop so you swim in a sea so thick with the detritus of Othering that you don't even notice it on a conscious level anymore, and all the bullies who emerge to kick you back in line if you do, if you have the temerity to question the message, and all the other bits and bobs of the brainwashing to which we are all subjected since the day we're born as part of scheme, nearly incomprehensible in scope, to ensure that challengers to these traditions are never made, and, if they're born, are squashed with the weight of mountainous tidal waves of blowback in the other direction…? The purveyors of that shit are the goddamn thought police.
And you know what one of the biggest lies they tell you is?
That it's the other way around.
[Originally posted August 2009.]
Get to Know a Contributor
Here are the Top Five Things I Bet You Didn't Know about Deeky W. Gashlycrumb:
1. He loves puns. Like, loooooooooves them. If you ever have the opportunity to make a pun for his enjoyment, you should definitely do it.
2. He will only eat food prepared from a Guy Fieri cookbook or at a Guy Fieri restaurant. His dream is to eat a plate of Red-Hot Blazin' Chicken Dingers with a side of Kickass Cheese-n-Cheese Slaw personally prepared by Guy Fieri.
3. He has a commissioned portrait of Larry the Cable Guy hanging over his bed.
4. His safe word is "Guttenberg."
5. His favorite actor is John Travolta, and his favorite John Travolta film is Michael. This is his favorite scene:
Video Description: John Travolta, playing the archangel Michael, hits a jukebox in a bar to make "Chain of Fools" play, then does a terrific choreographed dance with some ladies.
BONUS FUN-FACT!
I made this collage and emailed it to Deeky late last night, so it would be waiting to greet him in the morning:
He was very appreciative, and sent me a thank-you email which read: "Dear Liss: You are so thoughtful, and you know me so well! I am lucky to have a friend like you. All My Love, Deeks."
Lucky Dogs
My thanks to Shaker catvoncat for alerting me to this important piece of news: My BFF Zooey Deschanel has rescued two dogs from the Bill Foundation, a Los Angeles nonprofit rescue group. Deschanel tweeted this adorable picture of her two rescues:
They are named Dot and Zelda. You know, I happen to think that Zelda is a terrific name for a dog.
Congratulations to Zooey Deschanel, and her lovely and lucky pups!
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny]
Snide Introduction Here:
Five Democratic senators in two days announce sudden support of marriage equality. Timely. [Update: Six senators now.]
Here is the audio and transcript of yesterday's Supreme Court arguments on Proposition 8.
A high school science teacher is being investigated after using the word vagina in a lesson on the human reproductive system.
Scientists want to bring twenty-two animals back from extinction. Go science!
Speaking of: Jurassic Park 3D opens next week.
Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics has released a limited-edition lip gloss with to raise funds to help one of their employees complete her SRS.
TruFact™: Liss was afraid of The Cavity Creeps until she was fifteen.
[Image via Andy.]
