Bobby Day: "Rockin' Robin"
In The News
[Content note: Racism, sexual abuse, war, violence, misogyny]
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling:
A prominent barrister in the UK specialising in reproductive rights has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13. To protect old men.
Another day, another right-wing pundit's racist ties revealed.
Just like Jesus would do: Fans of a Christian singer arrested in a murder-for-hire plot are sure his victim probably deserved it.
A woman has been pulled alive from the ruins of an eight-storey building that collapsed in Bangladesh 17 days ago.
Former Florida governor Charlie Crist has announced his support of whatever will get him elected.
This guy.
This simple innovation transformed the reading habits of an entire nation.
For her birthday, I will serenade MMMbop to Liss over the phone.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda, just sitting around being happy.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by rain.
Recommended Reading:
The latest entry in the Naming and Identity Series: Nia.
Flavia: The Death Toll in Bangladesh IS a Feminist Issue [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of injury and death, and corporate malfeasance.]
Jess: No, Robert Littal, Jason Collins Doesn't Owe You Anything [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of homophobia and sexuality policing.]
Ashon: Corned Beef and Cabbage, Shrimp and Crabs: For Assata Shakur [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism and misogyny.]
Trudy: Examining White Supremacy and Heroism: When Both White and Black People Value White Lives More [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism, privilege, and internalized narratives of marginalization.]
Ragen: No Mani for You Fatty [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of fat bias and body/health policing.]
Jamilah: Shonda Rhimes on TV's Lack of Diversity: 'I Think It's Sad and Weird'
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Facts and Stuff!
So, Joel Stein wrote a pile of shit for Time magazine's cover story about how millennials are a selfish generation. Elspeth Reeve does a brilliant job deconstructing why this article is straight-up garbage, and you should definitely go read her piece.
I just want to quickly respond to this one excerpt she quotes:
In 1992, the nonprofit Families and Work Institute reported that 80 percent of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60 percent did.Stein is citing these stats as evidence of entitlement, but it fundamentally ignores the vast changes in corporate work practices that took place over that time period.
In order to maximize profits, corporations ubiquitously adopted the practice of not filling jobs when people leave and simply redistributing their work among remaining staff, who aren't compensated for the additional duties. The extra cash goes in the coffers while skeleton crews juggle the same workload once balanced among a larger staff.
It's a despicable practice, largely ignored in discussions of workers' rights—and casually elided by haughty sniffs at the alleged laziness of young workers. The fact is, many people don't want jobs with greater responsibility because they've already got too much on their plates at work as it is.
Mother Jones' Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery wrote a great piece [TW for ableist language] about what's known as the "speedup." The speedup is a huge part of the underlying reason for our protracted unemployment rate and wage stagnation, as well as the explanation for why productivity and profits keep rising despite high unemployment. And it almost certainly speaks, at least in part, to why younger workers aren't looking for more responsibility on the job.
But, you know, it's always easier to yell at kids to get off the lawn than take corporations to task for unethical business practices. Especially when your paycheck is dependent on keeping corporate advertisers happy.
Yeah, It's Because I'm a Partisan
[Content Note: Descriptions of sexual violence; guns.]
Yesterday, I wrote of the Cleveland Kidnapping Case: "I haven't written much about this case, because it's a hard one for me." Conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain has a different theory:
No, Robert Stacy McCain, the reason this case is hard for me is not because Ariel Castro is a registered Democrat. The reason this case is hard for me is because I was raped by a man who not only raped me in my own home, but also used to take me to his home, at the end of a gun, and lock me in his basement, and hurt me there, too. It's hard for me because, when his father found me, shivering and afraid, he told his son, "Tell her to make a pizza while she's down there," before he walked back upstairs and shut the door behind him. It's hard for me because I was forced to make fucking dinner for the abuser who called me his girlfriend and his cruelly indifferent father.
Reading about this case brings all of that back—the parts I most hate thinking about, the parts I don't usually write about. That's why it's hard.
Not because I'm a partisan, you reprehensible stain. Because I'm a survivor.
Question of the Day
What's for dinner? Or whatever the next meal of the day is in your part of the world.
Tom Hardy and a Puppy Visit Sumatra's Lake Toba
"Tom," said the puppy, licking its nose, "I really don't like the word 'normal' and what it conveys." And Tom said, "I know what you mean, puppy. I find it a useful concept on an individual scale, because it's helpful to process feelings and define boundaries and especially assess physical and mental health by determining What's Normal for Me. But on a social scale, the concept of 'normal' is, at best, pretty useless and, at worst, a dangerous agent of othering and marginalization." And the puppy said, "That's a good point. Like, it's normal for me to want to sniff strangers' butts, but if you started doing that, it might be cause for concern." And Tom said, "Exactly."
Huh
Turns out there are consequences to telling everyone, despite the fact that many of the jobs of the future will not require a college degree, that they should borrow lots and lots of money to pay for a college degree.
Piles of student loan debt are leading some borrowers to put off saving for retirement, buy a home and even get married -- and now many regret taking out the loans in the first place.Whoooooooooops too late!
About three-quarters of student loan borrowers surveyed said they -- or their children -- have been forced to make sacrifices in order to keep up with student loan payments, according to a survey from the American Institute of CPAs.
... The majority of borrowers said they didn't anticipate having such a difficult time repaying their loans, and 60% feel some amount of regret about the decision to fund their education this way.
"[Graduates in debt] start out with an anchor that slows their progression toward future goals," Ernie Almonte, chair of the AICPA's National CPA Financial Literacy Commission, said in a statement.
And debt only continues to grow -- exceeding $1 trillion nationwide, with about one in five households carrying student loans. Meanwhile, the average debt load jumped 5% to a new high of $26,600 last year.
..."College can open up many opportunities, and we do not want that college degree to become more of a burden than a blessing for those saddled with unmanageable debt in a tough employment market," CFPB director Richard Cordray said in a statement.
Just like everyone needed to get a mortgage and buy a house a decade ago, now everyone needs to get student loans and buy an education. There's always some fucking one-size-fits-all solution being peddled to USians to mask the realities that our economy is a house of cards, the population has gone lopsided as Baby Boomers age, there just aren't enough jobs anymore, and there's a cavernous class divide facilitated by middle class-destroying economic policies that are promoted by politicians in both parties even as they propose individual solutions on how to get and stay in the middle class. Buy a house! (Whoops.) Buy an education! (Whoops.)
Tasking individuals with finding solutions to systemic problems doesn't work, and telling young people to get an education at any cost, when the cost demonstrably includes for many of them fucking their adult lives before they've even started, is an individual solution to a systemic problem that's about trade policies, taxation, demographics, domestic spending priorities, and a whole host of other lumbering national issues over which an entire generation of young people has no control, no less any one individual young person.
What power the people had has been sold away.
US voters have sold away their standard of living, their quality of education, their jobs, their worker protections, their civil liberties, their social safety net, their national security, their environment, their economy, their very democracy itself—all in exchange for the gossamer promise of individual success, even though a society of disconnected individuals without responsibility for one another isn't a society at all.
And so the younger generation is left a broken nation, told to make their way with mortgaged bootstraps, to which has been pinned a notice of foreclosure.
Freedom to Marry Passes Minnesota House!
Yayayayayayayay!!! Passed: 75-59! The legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota now goes to the state senate, where it is expected to pass, and Governor Mark Dayton has promised to sign it into law.
I just got off the phone with Shaker GoldFishy and we squeeeeeed with excitement for ten million years! I can't wait for my invitation to GoldFishy's and The Captain's wedding! ♥
Photo of the Day
[Content Note: Kidnapping and sexual violence.]
Gina DeJesus, one of three women held captive for about a decade at a run-down Cleveland house, gives a thumbs-up as she is escorted toward her home Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak) Via.Blub.
I haven't written much about this case, because it's a hard one for me. I don't have a whole lot to say besides this: I am absolutely filled with joy that Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight are alive and free. (As well as Berry's six-year-old daughter.) I am in awe of their ability to survive, and I don't even have words to convey my feelings upon hearing a law enforcement source say that the three women, who were allowed rare interactions, came to "rely on each other for survival." They are so, so strong and brave. I wish them justice and peace. And I hope they will have all the support that they need as they move forward.
Also: I want to high-five this prosecutor:
Ariel Castro maintained his home as a prison for three young women, holding them in seclusion and sexually assaulting them for his own pleasure, a Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prosecutor told a judge Thursday.I hope he gets a fair trial, followed by a long stay in a safe facility where he can never harm anyone else ever again.
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Brian Murphy told the judge "the charges against Mr. Castro are based on premeditated, deliberate, and depraved decisions to snatch three young ladies from Cleveland's Westside streets to be used in whatever self-gratifying, self-serving way he saw fit."
"Today, the situation has turned, your honor," Murphy said. "Mr. Castro stands before you as a captive."
Boilerplates 101: The Edgy Comic Response
[Check all that apply: □ White □ Male □ Straight □ Cis □ Able-bodied] comic [insert name] made an appearance [□ at venue □ on chat show □ in film/series] yesterday, during which he said [alt: tweeted yesterday]:
[insert quote]Ha ha oh my aching sides.
This [□ misogynist □ racist □ homophobic □ transphobic □ disablist □ fat □ rape □ other: _________] joke is par for the course for [insert name], who was last seen mocking [insert marginalized population with relevant link] on [□ Twitter □ The Tonight Show], following which came a mountain of valid criticism [insert relevant links] which devolved into a debate about "free speech," while serious attempts at conversations about how humor transmits bigotry were drowned out by all-caps accusations of humorlessness and not being hip enough to understand sophisticated "edgy" humor conveying millennia-old prejudices.
[Insert name] took to Facebook to defend his garbage joke and post a paragraph break-free rant about [□ language policing □ political correctness □ censorship] and the art of comedy, which he appears to believe exists in a void.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, [insert name]'s fans defended the comic in the usual spectacular fashion:
[Insert name] also tweeted: "I am a self-styled provocateur who's not afraid to shock and offend in the service of humor."
Which, sure. I mean, he's definitely a "provocateur" if provocateur is broadly defined enough to encompass a playground antagonist who pokes other children with a stick. If anything designed to provoke any response can make one a provocateur, then give [insert name] his trophy for Provocateur of the Year or whatever.
But "provocateur" really should mean something loftier—not a person who engages in the tiresome bigotry of [□ misogyny □ racism □ homophobia □ transphobia □ disablism □ fat hatred □ rape apologia □ other: _________], who tells and defends [□ misogynist □ racist □ homophobic □ transphobic □ disablist □ fat □ rape □ other: _________] jokes, just to elicit an entirely predictable (and legitimate) negative reaction from people getting poked with the stick, who are then immediately dismissed with charges of "humorlessness" or a lack of sophistication required to get the nuances of a joke to which the punchline is, at its essence, you are less than me.
A provocateur, if the word is have real meaning, is someone who challenges existent paradigms and marginalizing narratives, who presents a radical thought that makes people sit rather uncomfortably in their privilege and urges them to wander off the well-worn path of their socialization. It's someone who changes minds.
It isn't someone who calls people [insert relevant slur(s)] and pretends that it's brave.
The irony of [insert name] calling himself a "provocateur" is that he routinely insists that he is not trying to elicit reactions, but just say whatever the fuck he wants to because it's funny.
[insert relevant quote from interview in which comic defends joke on the basis that comedy is about Whether It's Funny, and the best comics are those who prioritize the art form and don't cave to the PC police]That sounds less like a provocateur and more like a sociopath, whose cavernous void of empathy allows him to substitute self-indulgent id-fulfillment for complex ethics.
[Insert name] is the comedic equivalent of the shit-stirring contrarian who comes into a social justice space and disgorges with a whiff of Pleistocenian air the most exhausting of ancient stereotypes, only to punctuate it with: "There, I said it!" as if zie were Spartacus throwing off the shackles off political correctness, and not just another impolite asshole who doesn't even have the decency to wipe the glyptodon scat off hir shoes before taking a privilege dump in the middle of the living room carpet.
"Women are overemotional! There, I said it!" Yep, we've never heard that one before, brave little soldier.
[Insert name] nonetheless actually believes himself to be some sort of prophet, some kind of revolutionary whose hackneyed observations about oppressed populations is actual genius. He's not being ironic after all. He's really just a straight-up fucko.
And [insert name] is seriously kidding himself if he thinks material that dates back to 1600 BC can be called "edgy" with a straight fucking face. There isn't anything less edgy than ancient bigotry.
See also: "Challenging taboos," "pushing back boundaries," and other euphemisms for using as humor various forms of prejudice and violence by which privileged comics will never personally be victimized, the sting or threat of which will never even touch them.
The sting or threat of which they believe they can absolve themselves by pretending that comedy exists in a void.
The thing is, comedy does not exist in a void and context matters.
Comedians are social commentators—their job is to remark upon culture and its various absurdities and failures, and just because their objective is to make people laugh doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that any professional social commentator or critic with any integrity has, which is to expose, not entrench, the cultural narratives that are damaging to the marginalized, voiceless, and dispossessed.
If you're telling jokes that entrench privilege, you're not a comic. You're a professional bully.
Absolving comedians of any and all responsibility for their material necessitates deliberately misunderstanding or ignoring what the actual role of a comedian is, what purpose they are meant to serve.
It doesn't matter if they don't want that role and purpose and responsibility; that's the trade-off for a public career in which your content is culture. Ignoring it doesn't release one from the responsibility; it merely makes one an asshole.
And, generally speaking, a shitty comic. Because the thing about doing socially irresponsible comedy is that those caverns are well-fucking-mined by now. There's some rich irony in someone rehashing a tired-ass riff on WOMEN AMIRITE? accusing the people who aren't laughing of being the ones without a developed sense of humor.
Finally: Asking someone to be a little more considerate isn't the same thing as censorship. Or PC policing. Or lacking a sense of humor. Or being easily offended. Or whatthefuckever.
I am challenging [insert name]—and his vociferous defenders—to greater empathy, to understand the power of humor from the perspective of the marginalized person who is its target.
I am not the thought police.
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 a 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.
In The News
[Content note: Guns, gun culture, homophobia, transphobia]
Teen girl wins coding championship. Awesome. Totally awesome.
Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation's food supply. Uh oh.
Transgender Health Empowerment is struggling with a financial crisis that has prevented it from paying its employees on time and has triggered staff layoffs and resignations.
That 3D printable gun? Yeah, its blueprints have been downloaded 100,000 times in the last two days. Yikes!
Jeanne Cooper, the enduring soap opera star who appeared on The Young and the Restless for nearly four decades, has died.
The Minnesota legislature is set to have its first vote on marriage equality today. Good luck, Minnesota!
The Western black rhino has been declared extinct. Sorry, Western black rhino, we kinda suck.
Daily Dose of Cute
Livsy, being ridiculously adorable.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Headline of the Day
New York Times: Economists See Deficit Emphasis as Impeding Recovery.
Ha ha YA THINK?
If only there had been people who had the foresight to warn for years that the bullshit emphasis on deficit reduction in the middle of an economic crisis would be a garbage disaster!
I mean, people who aren't dirty hippies, obviously. OH WELL. Let's keep listening to the same geniuses who predicted the Iraq War would last six months and trickle-down economics would make everyone rich and deregulation would make us all safer and the earth is totes flat, because I'm sure they'll be right SOMEDAY, and we wouldn't want to miss it!
Discussion Thread: Pro-Consent Films
[Content Note: Discussion of consent.]
Last night, I was flipping channels when I saw that sex, lies & videotape was airing, which is one of my "must stop and watch" films. I caught it right at the beginning, so what I'm saying is I stayed up way too late last night.
Anyway!
Watching it for the one billionth time, I was thinking (again) how many interesting things the film has to say about consent, agency, and boundaries. And I was trying to think of some other films that have interesting things to say on those subjects, and wowee wow the list was pretty short!
So, here's a thread for sharing films (and/or TV shows) that have smart commentary around consent, agency, and boundaries. Not limited just to sexual interactions, as Elementary is a show, for example, which has many good insights around consent and boundaries totally outside of sexual interactions.
Whaddaya got?
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
"[20% of women report they had been sexually assaulted] before they came into the military. So they come in from a society where this occurs. Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it."—General Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force's top commander, during his Tuesday testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the issue of sexual violence in the US military.
There's a lot I find interesting about this quote, especially the many ways the General finds to distance the military from rape culture (and even the larger society itself) in so few words. His implication appears to be that female victims of sexual violence are bringing the rape culture into the military with them, as if it wouldn't be there were it not for loose-moraled women (not like HIS kids!) who make the bad choice to get themselves raped.
The rhetorical pretzels into which men will twist themselves to avoid having to task male rapists with the responsibility for rape never ceases to fucking amaze disgust me.
If Only the Media Would Talk about Republicans!
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) ripped the media in a speech Tuesday to the Ripon Society, arguing press coverage is partly responsible for the GOP's messaging woes.Poor Republicans! Shoved in a corner like that by the big meanie media! It must be terrible for the GOP that most of the media only promotes a conservative agenda 24 hours a day! OH THE HUMANITY.
Cantor, who has tried to recast the image of the GOP with his Making Life Work agenda, said the party's economic message is often drowned out by coverage of debt and deficits.
"The media has done a great job of sort of shoving us in the corner, because all they say we are concerned with is somehow balancing the budget and cutting spending and taking things away from people," Cantor said. "What we're trying to say is that we need to do those things in order to reenergize the opportunity machine of America. We're about giving people opportunity. And that's really what our agenda this year is about."
And, gee, you know, Cantor has a point. You don't hear a lot about how the Republican Party is "about giving people opportunity." And it's definitely the media and not the fact that their garbage platform is, in fact, not about giving people opportunity, even a little bit.
Republicans have focused recently on crafting a more appealing political message, most notably in relation to minority voters. Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus has been traveling across the country meeting with minority leaders, and the RNC issued a post-campaign evaluation that called for more substantive engagement with minority communities."Pander Bootstraps!"—Goat|Paperclip 2016.
Some in the GOP have also acknowledged the need to soften the party's economic message, arguing that it's easier for President Obama and Democrats to sell a message about government benefits than it is for Republicans to sell a vision of personal responsibility.
