Duran Duran
Question of the Day
What food or beverage have you never tried, but you'd love to try, given the opportunity?
I've never tried dragon fruit, and I'd love to. Our local grocery store recently had them for the first time ever, and I was so excited! I grabbed one up, wrapped it in a produce bag, then set it down to wrap avocados, and promptly left it behind. Whoooooooops!
And they haven't had them since. Boo.
Tom Hardy and a Puppy Visit Mt. Everest
In case you are wondering if I have seen the picture of Tom Hardy posing with Baby Bane, YES I HAVE! It is obviously the cutest thing ever—or at least since Tom Hardy posed with a puppy.
Basically, Tom Hardy is very proficient at posing with adorable beings smaller than he is.
Good job, Tom Hardy! That is an excellent skill to have!
Number of the Day
5%: The percentage of his salary President Obama plans to return "to the Treasury in solidarity with federal workers who are going to be furloughed as part of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester."
The voluntary move would be retroactive to March 1, the official said, and apply through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The White House came up with the 5 percent figure to approximate the level of spending cuts to nondefense federal agencies that took effect that day.Good, I guess? I mean, yes, decent move. Absolutely the right thing to do, given the circumstances. But I kind of wish the sequester would just get fucking fixed instead, you know?
"The president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury," the official said.
Word of the president's decision came a day after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter disclosed that they would return a share of their salaries commensurate with the pay lost by the department's civilian employees who are expected to be furloughed for 14 days before the end of the fiscal year.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: War; violence; animal abuse.]
"He pulled me out of one of my darkest times, so I had to pull him out of one of his darkest places."—Staff Sgt. Jesse Knott, on his cat Koshka, whom he rescued from Afghanistan with the help of a very brave local interpreter.
Knott met Koshka on base in the Maiwand District of Afghanistan, where the feline worked as the unofficial mouse catcher. But despite his service, Koshka wasn't always taken care of.
"He was showing some signs that people weren't taking very good care of him," Knott told CBS affiliate WBTV. "I found paint in his fur a couple of times. And then people took clippers and shaved his back."
Concerned for the cat, Knott made room for Koshka in his office, even though soldiers aren't allowed to have pets.
Then, on Dec. 8, 2011, a suicide bomber targeted a military convoy near Knott's base and killed two of the soldier's friends. Knott said he was struck by depression and was crying in his office when Koshka came to comfort him.
"With tears in my eyes he locked eyes with me, reached out with his paw and pressed it to my lips, then climbed down into my lap curled up and shared the moment with me," he told the Clackamas Review.
That was when Knott decided that Koshka couldn't stay in Afghanistan.
"He pulled me out of one of my darkest times, so I had to pull him out of one of his darkest places," he said.
The soldier was unable to get his feline friend on a military convoy, so he forged a plan with a brave local interpreter who agreed to take the cat to Kabul.
Both Koshka and the interpreter were at risk — if the man was discovered to be helping an American, the repercussions could be deadly.
"The risk to him was immense," Knott said. "This is a cat with a purple collar and an American-brand cat carrier, going halfway across Afghanistan, going across God knows how many Taliban checkpoints."
But the interpreter got Koshka to the Kabul airport undetected, and Knott's family paid $3,000 to fly the cat to their home in Oregon.
Staff Sgt. Knott and Koshka. Image via.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by picture frames.
Recommended Reading:
More entries in the amazing Naming Series being hosted by Grace and Jess: Andrea, Flavia, Kristin, and William.
Brandale: Poor Women: Rape Culture's Path of Least Resistance [Content Note: Rape culture; classism.]
Rinku: Why the AP's Choice to Drop the I-Word Is a Crucial Victory
Trudy: I Don't Have To Like What White Women Like—Pop Culture and Feminism [Content Note: White Supremacy.]
Cat: On Charging Fat Passengers More to Fly [Content Note: Fat bias.]
Fannie: Benevolent Sexism, Again [Content Note: Misogyny.]
Travis: Brittney Griner Deserves a Real NBA Tryout, Not a Publicity Stunt
Veronica: Review: Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
On the Fixed State Ally Model vs. Process Model Ally Work
There are two ways that people with privilege tend to view ally work.
In the Fixed State Ally Model, the privileged person views hirself as an ally and claims the mantle for hirself. Zie may also acknowledge that zie is always learning and trying to do better, but states that zie is an ally to one or more marginalized populations.
In the Process Model, the privileged person views hirself as someone engaged in ally work, but does not identify as an ally, rather viewing ally work as an ongoing process. Zie views being an ally as a fluid state, externally defined by individual members of the one or more marginalized populations on behalf zie leverages hir privilege.
For various reasons, embracing the Fixed State Ally Model is actually antithetical to effective ally work.
1. Being an ally cannot be a fixed state. It is an ongoing process, not a permanent status that a privileged person can claim. I am going to quote my friend Jess, in her interview with Nicole Clark about being an ally:
[To me, being an ally] means listening. It means checking my privilege. It means recognizing constantly that my experience is not THE experience. It means always trying to be as inclusive as possible. It means apologizing when I fail to do any of these things. It means learning and doing better as I go. @FeministGriote says often that being an ally is not an identity, it is a process. And that has affected me deeply. I try to remember that it is not something I can claim but rather something I can live through my choices and actions.Rather than imagining myself as A Good Ally, full-stop, I try to assess whether I have been an effective ally in specific instances and in specific ways. Did I speak up when I should have? Do I equally set off-limits any "debate" of intrinsic humanity for all populations? Am I giving enough support to writers whose life experiences are fundamentally different than my own? Am I listening? That is not a comprehensive list.
That approach is helpful to me, because it subverts any instinct to defend myself on the basis that I am A Good Ally and instead challenges me continually to behave like one. I'm not invested in a fixed reputation as an ally, which would undermine the vigilance I need to have, especially around the ways in which my privileges benefit me in ways that aren't always obvious to me.
It also encourages me not to get stuck in failure.
[CN: Disablism.] Many years ago (I have been doing this a long time), a reader asked me to stop using "crazy" and "insane" to mean things other than mental illness. And I responded with some cringingly embarrassing bullshit about how I have a mental illness and it doesn't bother me and blah blah fart.
Straight-up, I knew I was wrong, even at the time, but I was: 1. Deeply conflicted (for lack of a better word) about my own mental illness; and 2. Not yet as effective at or confident with managing (and internally processing) charges of oversensitivity and thought-policing, which are leveled every time I draw a new boundary. So I acted like an asshole.
When the issue came up again, I responded better. The way I should have in the first place. Disablist language was set off-limits.
If I viewed myself in some sort of fixed state as ally/not ally, I would have gotten stuck defending an indefensible position in order to maintain my idea of self, instead of the actual person I was being to other people who were challenging me to do better.
If I viewed myself as an ally, rather than as someone who wants to engage in ally work as a process, I would not be leaving room to expect more of myself.
And I need to challenge myself, because I fuck up—which I say not in preemptive self-defense of the next time I do, but because there are people who remember that I have fucked up, people my fuck-ups hurt, and the very least (literally) that I can do is remember that I have fucked up, too. Owning it is part of ally work, not least of which because internalizing your failures helps prevent more of them.
2. Asserting that you are an ally to a marginalized population in defense of failing to behave as an ally to an individual within that population is bullshit. It's bullshit for a lot of reasons, but chief among them is the fact that it isn't really our role, nor our right, along our axes of privilege, to define ourselves as allies.
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley's got his eye on you.
Zelda is the one whom everyone wants to hug, and she tolerates that from me, but she doesn't love getting hugs. You know who does love getting hugs, though? This guy.
"HUGS? I LOVE THEM!"
In The News
[Content Note: Homophobia, guns, gun culture.]
What What!:
The NRA remains the worst thing in the universe.
Jane Nebel Henson, co-creator of the Muppets, died yesterday.
An Italian scientist says vaccines are what make people gay.
Rutgers has fired a coach for getting caught on video being a bully.
Two Facts
[Content Note: Homophobia.]
1. David Brooks is still being employed by the New York Times to write a garbage column.
2. This week's garbage column is like a trophy to garbage.
He spends the first part of the column sarcastically sneering at the libertine expansions of freedom "we've" won over the last 40 years, resulting in people being "much more at liberty these days to follow their desires, unhampered by social convention, religious and ethnic traditions and legal restraints."
(Note to David Brooks: People with uteri exist.)
He then goes on to note that the "big thinkers" have always warned about the "downsides" of too much freedom, and he laments that "the balance between freedom and restraint has been thrown out of whack. People no longer even have a language to explain why freedom should sometimes be limited. The results are as predicted. A decaying social fabric, especially among the less fortunate. Decline in marriage. More children raised in unsteady homes. Higher debt levels as people spend to satisfy their cravings."
I could spend the rest of the day detailing what's wrong with that, but I've NO TIME, because he immediately segues from this snide lamentation to observe:
But last week saw a setback for the forces of maximum freedom. A representative of millions of gays and lesbians went to the Supreme Court and asked the court to help put limits on their own freedom of choice. They asked for marriage.Again, I could spend the rest of the day detailing what's wrong with that, but instead I will simply say: Everything. Every single thing is wrong with that.
Marriage is one of those institutions — along with religion and military service — that restricts freedom. Marriage is about making a commitment that binds you for decades to come. It narrows your options on how you will spend your time, money and attention.
Whether they understood it or not, the gays and lesbians represented at the court committed themselves to a certain agenda. They committed themselves to an institution that involves surrendering autonomy. They committed themselves to the idea that these self-restrictions should be reinforced by the state. They committed themselves to the idea that lifestyle choices are not just private affairs but work better when they are embedded in law.
And far from being baffled by this attempt to use state power to restrict individual choice, most Americans seem to be applauding it. Once, gay culture was erroneously associated with bathhouses and nightclubs. Now, the gay and lesbian rights movement is associated with marriage and military service.
(Note to David Brooks: Bisexual people exist.)
But the thing that really fucking gets me is this: Whether they understood it or not. Fuck you, David Brooks. Fuck you.
I have had just about enough of privileged men talking about marginalized people like we don't know our own lives. I have had enough for a lifetime, enough for six eternities. This is vile, hateful, infantilizing swill, and lest anyone mistake that I'm being uncharitable, that is the charitable version.
More News from the Conservative Legislation Lab
The Indiana House is the latest state government to pass a bill requiring abortion clinics to have access to full surgical facilities—and, like the latest legislation in Texas, this legislation requires even clinics dispensing mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or "the abortion pill," to have access to surgical facilities, which many clinics cannot actually obtain.
The Indiana House approved a bill yesterday that requires clinics that administer the so-called abortion pill to also have full surgical facilities, a move that would force Planned Parenthood to halt all abortion services at a central Indiana clinic.This legislation, if made law, would be devastating for abortion-seeking people in Indiana.
Supporters say the bill protects women's health, but the president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana called the facility mandates for early-term abortions "regulation without reason."
The Senate has adopted a similar measure and would need to agree to some changes in wording before the bill is sent to Republican Gov. Mike Pence for his signature.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana runs four of the 10 clinics in Indiana that offer abortion services, President Betty Cockrum said.
Republican state Representative Sharon Negele, sponsor of the garbage bill, explained her assault on legal healthcare thus: "This is a very emotionally charged issue and I want you to understand that from the beginning my intent was to seek out a remedy to safeguard our young women who have chosen this path."
You want to safeguard young women? Then give them access to a full spectrum of healthcare, including abortion.
[H/T to Jordan.]
Question of the Day
What is the most recent food or beverage you tried for the first time ever?
The most recent thing I can remember trying for the first time was Tres Leches Cake, over at my friend Ari's house. It was ridiculously delicious.
Welp, Pat Robertson Is Still Being Terrible
[Content Note: Racism; disablism.]
It's always pretty safe to assume that as long as Pat Robertson is alive and kicking, he's out there somewhere being terrible. But every once in awhile, I like to check in with him and see what sort of terrible business he's getting up to these days. And, obviously, he's saying terrible stuff!
Today on the 700 Club, a viewer asked host Pat Robertson why miracles such as "people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking" seem to "happen with great frequency in Africa, and not here in the USA?" Robertson first responded by joking it is "because those people overseas didn't go to Ivy League schools."HA HA PERFECT. That is just a perfect thing to say for about a dozen different reasons. And by "perfect," I hope it's evident that I mean "terrible."
But Robertson was actually serious.
"Well, we are so sophisticated, we think we've got everything figured out, we know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn't real, we know about all this stuff," Robertson lamented, "in many schools, in the most advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism."
Unlike these too-educated Americans, "overseas they are simple and humble" and are more ready to accept miracles.
Tom Hardy and a Puppy Go to Paris
If Dudley and Zelda could talk, they would tell you that I kiss them on their noses one million times every day. I do not kiss the kitty girls on their noses, because they hate it. But the dogs pretty much think it's the greatest thing ever. And so do I. Though I have never done it anywhere as fancy as Paris.
[NB: The original photo is a promotional shot from the set of Hardy's new film Animal Rescue. It is not a candid personal photo.]
Elsewhere on the Internetz...
This dipshit mixes up Melissa McEwen—who is: 1. Not me; 2. The author of the Hunt Gather Love and Paleo Drama—and me, then tries to retrofit a post in which he originally attributed one of McEwen's posts to me, creating this fucking mess of nonsensical gibberish which includes a picture of me stolen from someone else's Facebook account.
Reading is fundamental!
So I tweeted at Richard Nikoley, the author of this amazing post, in order to let him know he has clownhair for brainz and also to let him know he does not have my permission to use that image.
. @rnikoley Hey, bozo: @melissamcewen and I are not the same person. Your edited post is garbage. I have nothing to do w/ Paleodrama.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 2, 2013
. @rnikoley Also: You do not have my permission to use my image. Unless you use this one: twitter.com/Shakestweetz/s…
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 2, 2013
[The image is of me flipping off the camera.]
Mr. Nikoley responded by telling me that I lack reading comprehension, and that if I had a problem with his posting the picture, I should take it up with Google, with a link to an image search for my name.
. @rnikoley I am taking it up with you. You published the photo. I am telling you that you don't have my permission. You gonna ignore that?
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 2, 2013
. @rnikoley I am AWARE the picture has been posted in other places. But I am telling YOU that you do not have my permission to post it.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 2, 2013
. @rnikoley Your ethical position is: Someone else posted it w/o permission, so that means I can too? Awesome. Cool ethics, bro.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 2, 2013
That's when he blocked me, lol.
So, basically, this fucking dingaling can't tell the difference between two women with a similar name (hey, we're all a monolith anyway, right?), tries—badly—to cover his tracks, and leaves up the picture of me he does not have my consent to use, even though I literally have nothing to do with the blog post with which he's taking issue.
Anyway.
One of the things I love about people reposting this photo of me is that it's always accompanied by commentary on how I'm fat and there's a lot of embedded/implied shit about how I should be super embarrassed by this photo because I'm visibly fat and making a funny face mid-storytelling. Uh, nope. I'm in my favie Atari shirt having fun at Deeks' house. I pretty much love it.
I look at that picture and remember a great day that ended with Deeky and me staying up almost all night having a tumbling conversation about meaningful things. Deeky and I were already friends, but that was one of those days which changes the shape of a friendship into something more and better and grander than it was the day before.
That was a day, a day spent with Deeky and Spudsy, two of my favorite people on the planet, in which I was full of love for them and felt loved right back.
No amount of using that picture to try to shame or hate me will ever change that.
It's mine. No matter who steals it.
[Related Reading: Adventures in Blogging, Part Wev.]
You Know What You Need?
I can't stop watching this!
And Then This Happened
So, Adam Lee has written a follow-up post, which is titled "On Being a Good Ally, Continued," about what he calls our "minor disagreement," and what I would call his accusing me of monolithizing movement atheism when I did no such thing.
I couldn't be less interested in writing about this anymore, but, in the interest of continuing to document what happens in response when a female atheist explains why she is alienated by movement atheism, and offers solicited advice on how to fix that, I feel obliged to make a note of it.
There's a lot I find troubling about his post, but I will make only two observations in response, both of which concern this section:
In her latest post, McEwan wrote:1. I will note, again, that my original post with which Lee took issue included this paragraph: "My admiration for the women who hang in and stick it out and fight the same fights over and over. That is a valid and commendable choice, even though it's not mine." He ignored that paragraph in his first piece in order to make the accusation that I sounded as though I were "saying that atheism has only one voice, and it's the voice of the sexists." Only when I subsequently singled out "men in movement atheism who make a practice of being good allies to women" was Lee satisfied that I was not monolithizing movement atheism.
I will say, again, that I know there are men in movement atheism who make a practice of being good allies to women. (At least straight, white, cis women. And some men more broadly than that.)I'm glad to hear that! And since that was the only part of McEwan's original post that I had any reservations about, I dare say we might even have reached a consensus. Notwithstanding the noise and clamor of the misogynists, they're not the majority.
For someone who claims this isn't about cookies, that he's "not saying that anyone has a duty to express gratitude for allies at every opportunity, or that we should expect constant praise for showing a minimum of decency," it's incredible that until I said something which he could read as explicit praise of who he views himself to be, he was accusing me of monolithizing movement atheism as "the voice of the sexists."
That claim was dependent on disappearing my praise of female atheists; it was dependent on disappearing the fact that I'd offered solicited advice in good faith to atheist men who wanted to be better allies (why would I do that if I believed atheism was a sexist monolith?); it was dependent on ignoring the entire post I wrote about the "small but vocal group."
I had shown and stated in multiple ways already that I did not believe movement atheism to speak with a singular sexist voice. But amidst a lot of valid criticism I had made of the people who do engage in misogyny, Adam Lee's primary objective was not to listen meaningfully to any of that criticism. It was to accuse me, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, of being unfair because I hadn't said, in words he found sufficiently inclusive, that there are good guys, too.
That is not being an ally. That is a cookie-seeking mission.
Which brings me to:
2. Lee chose to again quote only one line of a 1,000+ word piece, the very next paragraph subsequent to his excerpted quote is:
But I shouldn't need to keep saying that over and over. Obliging me to salve the consciences of men affiliated with a movement which, irrespective of their efforts, is still incredibly hostile to lots of women outside (and inside) of it, is antithetical to being an ally and incompatible with making me feel like there is a place for me in the movement, if I want my role to be anything but deferential gratitude to men for being decent human beings.So, he selectively quotes another piece to pat me on the head for explicitly acknowledging men who show me basic decency, but ignores the following paragraph which explains why obliging me to keep saying that very thing is fundamentally not the behavior of a good ally, and does this in a piece titled "On Being a Good Ally." Neat!
I don't know how many times in how many different ways I can say this: Lecturing marginalized people on the ways in which they need to make privileged people more comfortable is not just failing to be a good ally; it is deeply hostile behavior that centers the comfort of the already-privileged. Maintaining one's comfort cannot be an objective of someone keen to shed hir privilege.
I genuinely don't know whether Lee is failing to understand why this arc has been so deeply problematic, especially under the banner of professing to be my ally, or whether he is simply ignoring my argument in order to find some way to still be right by calling it a draw. In either case, whether it takes more empathy work or a willingness to shed the vestiges of gotta-win, to actually be a reliable ally he's got to allow his privilege to be penetrated with the idea that cherry-picking and tone-policing and running marginalized people's feelings and perceptions through a validity prism are all utterly incompatible with ally work.
I'm offering that advice in good faith, to someone who says he wants to be a good ally.
